@c Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
@c For copying conditions, see the file gpc.texi.
@c This file is part of the GPC Manual.
@c
@c Authors: Jukka Virtanen <jtv@hut.fi>
@c          J.J. van der Heijden <j.j.vanderheijden@student.utwente.nl>
@c          Peter Gerwinski <peter@gerwinski.de>
@c
@c Last modification: 2004-01-01 (file up to date)

The purpose of the GNU Pascal project is to produce a Pascal
compiler (called GNU Pascal or GPC) which

@itemize @bullet
@item combines the clarity of Pascal with powerful tools suitable
for real-life programming,

@item supports both the Pascal standard and the Extended Pascal
standard as defined by ISO, ANSI and IEEE (ISO 7185:1990, ISO/IEC
10206:1991, ANSI/IEEE 770X3.160-1989),

@item supports other Pascal standards (UCSD Pascal, Borland Pascal,
parts of Borland Delphi, Mac Pascal and Pascal-SC) in so far as this
serves the goal of clarity and usability,

@item may be distributed under GNU license conditions, and

@item can generate code for and run on any computer for which the
GNU C compiler can generate code and run on.
@end itemize

Pascal was originally designed for teaching. GNU Pascal provides a
smooth way to proceed to challenging programming tasks without
learning a completely different language.

The current release implements Standard Pascal (ISO 7185, levels 0
and 1), most of Extended Pascal (ISO 10206, aiming for full
compliance), is highly compatible to Borland Pascal (version 7.0),
has some features for compatibility to other compilers (such as VAX
Pascal, Sun Pascal, Mac Pascal, Borland Delphi and Pascal-SC).

It provides a lot of useful GNU extensions not found in other Pascal
compilers, e.g. to ease the interfacing with C and other languages
in a portable way, and to work with files, directories, dates and
more, mostly independent of the underlying operating system.

Included units provide support for regular expressions, arithmetic
with integer, rational and real numbers of unlimited size,
internationalization, inter-process communication, message digests
and more. Demo programs show the usage of these units and of many
compiler features.
