# Basic Pascal



## 1nf3rn0x (May 29, 2012)

Hi guys. At school we just started some pascal programming and our teacher has told us to try do it on our own at first. I'm 15 and have no background in programming. These are some questions we were given.

All to be done with pascal! In bold is what I have done.


1 The program should ask for the user’s personal details, including fi rst name, family name, birth date, favourite singer, favourite movie actor, then display details on the screen like this:
First name:
Family name:
Birth date:
Favourite singer:
Favourite movie actor:
(Have not answered this yet)

1 Write an assignment statement that assigns your own name to a string variable and prints out the message ‘Hello, yourname!’

*VAR
fname : string;
Write(“What is your name?”);
Readln (fname);
Write (“Hello “ ,fname, “!”)*

2 Write an assignment statement that assigns the first letter of both your first and second names to character variables and then prints out a greeting using your initials only: ‘Hello, XX!’

*VAR
fname: string;
sname: string;
Write(“What is you first and last name?”);
Read *
This is where I am confused. 

And this I have not yet gotten up to.
3 Write an assignment statement that assigns your birth date to a date variable. Next write a function which calculates the number of days that have passed from the birthdate to the present and finally prints out the
message ‘Hello, your name! You are xx days old!’

And help would be greatly appreciated!


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## librin.so.1 (May 29, 2012)

ooh! I ditched this B&D language as soon as I passed the CS exam / graduated from highschool. Hehe!

Nonetheless, I will try to help You, given I manage to remember it ;]


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## 1nf3rn0x (May 29, 2012)

Vinska said:


> ooh! I ditched this B&D language as soon as I passed the CS exam / graduated from highschool. Hehe!
> 
> Nonetheless, I will try to help You, given I manage to remember it ;]



Thanks! I know for the second one,  Left (1) should be used. But I'm not sure how to word it out.


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## okidna (May 29, 2012)

Every string variable is an array of chars. 

Example :
You have *fname* variable, containing "Edward".
So fname[1] = "E", fname[2] = "d", fname[3] = "w", and so on.

Something like this :


```
uses crt;

var
fname, sname : string;

begin
writeln("What is your first name?");
readln(fname);
writeln("What is your last name?");
readln(sname);
writeln("Hello, ",fname[1], sname[1], "!");
end.
```

or you can use leftstr(string,n), this function return a string from the leftmost position.

Example :
You have *fname* variable, containing "Edward".
leftstr(fname,1) will return "E",
leftstr(fname,3) will return "Edw",
leftstr(fname,5) will return "Edwar", etc.

As for date function you can use GetDate function (don't forget to add *dos* uses).


```
procedure GetDate(var Year, Month, Day, DayofWeek: Word);
```

Get user birthday, get today's date, calculate the difference and convert to days. Something like that, I'm sure you can figure this one out .


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## Drone (May 29, 2012)

A tiny hint: 

In Pascal before the final end always use *readln* it will keep the working screen on


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## 1nf3rn0x (May 29, 2012)

Thankyou!


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## Kreij (May 29, 2012)

Moved to programming forum.
Memory lane ... I haven't written anything in Pascal since the '80's


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## GSG-9 (May 31, 2012)

I love all of you, and my pascal skills are limited to 3 assignments and lots of vodka. If you need help with Jquery/CSS/Html C# or .net let me know. 

P.S. Kreij where are you? I grew up in Green Bay and still consider it my home. On contract (loan) in the cities though.


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## Kreij (May 31, 2012)

GSG-9 said:


> P.S. Kreij where are you? I grew up in Green Bay and still consider it my home. On contract (loan) in the cities though.



I'm out in the sticks near Montello, WI (Marqette County).
I grew up in the Chicago area but have adopted WI as my real home.
I taught myself Pascal when working for GE. Wrote various utilities and a SQA bug tracking database in Pascal while working at the MRI division. 
Feature creep caused it's demise and we converted it over to a 3rd party DBS system.

Anyway, Pascal is an easy language to work in, I'm just surprised they still teach it as most companies that I know of are going with straight "C" or an OOP/Net language for just about everything.


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## GSG-9 (May 31, 2012)

Kreij said:


> I'm out in the sticks near Montello, WI (Marqette County).
> I grew up in the Chicago area but have adopted WI as my real home.
> I taught myself Pascal when working for GE. Wrote various utilities and a SQA bug tracking database in Pascal while working at the MRI division.
> Feature creep caused it's demise and we converted it over to a 3rd party DBS system.
> ...



Yeah its a mix of C# and .Net here.


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## Peter1986C (May 31, 2012)

Kreij said:


> I'm out in the sticks near Montello, WI (Marqette County).
> Anyway, Pascal is an easy language to work in, I'm just surprised they still teach it as most companies that I know of are going with straight "C" or an OOP/Net language for just about everything.



I remembered being taught some basics in Pascal too, after that Delphi. I guess it is to get familiar with programming in general and not really about learning the language itself that much.


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## Protagonist (May 31, 2012)

I remember our project was to automate a car hire service, was straight A+ material easy,.... but down memory lane cant remember much of it tho a slight polish and it will all come back. Damn I and a friend of mine finished our project that was to take a month and even had time to make a game (Was a board game X/O) though i did like only 1/4 of the code and 100% testing while he did 3/4 of rest of the game code was running in his head like damn. He recently buzzed me and said we should make/ design a new game, i Told him i think most of my code skills are gone its been like 10 years since i wrote any serious code, But Oh well the game project currently in research stage we are checking out several game engines, to see what can suit us best, if we could get our hands on FOX Engine,... would be nice.

@1nf3rn0x sorry i went off topic but this brings lots of memories..


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