Directory: Pascal

This directory contains a couple of MicroSoft Word documents that help 
students who learned to program in Pascal when they are trying to deal
with Ada for the first time. While a translation approach is not envouraged
in general, it does help beginning students feel more comfortable with
what they already know, and ready to expand that knowledge to include new
design paradigms.

Versions of the files with .ps and .txt extensions are Postscript and plain
text files

files:

ada4pas.doc 	is a gentle introduction to the package structures provided
		by Ada95 for programmers with some background in Pascal. It 
		begins by motivating the need for data abstraction and 
		pointing out the shortcomings of various approaches suggested 
		for implementing "abstraction-like" elements in Pascal. It 
		then discusses the features of Turbo Pascal that provide some
		abstraction capabilities, maps those features into a 
		corresponding Ada95 package, and then motivates and provides
		a generic package for the same features.

p2atrans.doc 	is a translator of features of Pascal to corresponding Ada95
		features. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of 
		all the features of either language. Rather, it is intended 
		to get Pascal programmers up and running writing Ada95 
		programs with a minimum of outside help. They can think of 
		how they would like to approach the problem in Pascal and 
		use the translator to figure out the corresponding approach 
		and syntax using Ada95.