Pascal Programming Question:

Pascal is a structured language, using if-then-else, while, repeat-until, and for-to/downto control structures. It differs primarily from proceeding languages in that data structures were also included, with records (a feature borrowed from COBOL), arrays, files, sets and pointers.

Pascal is also unusual for forging an effective compromise between language simplicity, power, and matching of language structures to underlying machine implementation.

Pascal also has many features for compiler writers. The language is constructed to have a minimum of ambiguity. Pascal, with few exceptions, can be processed "forward" with all of the smaller elements (like constants, types, etc) being defined before they are used. Pascal requires the types and exact sizes of operands to be known before they are operated on, again leading to simplified language processing and efficient output code (although this feature has often been called a problem). For this reason, Pascal still remains a popular language to implement compilers for as part of a compiler science class.