This document describes all constants, types, variables, functions and
procedures as they are declared in the system unit.
Furthermore, it describes all pascal constructs supported by Free Pascal, and lists
all supported data types. It does not, however, give a detailed explanation
of the pascal language. The aim is to list which Pascal constructs are
supported, and to show where the Free Pascal implementation differs from the
Turbo Pascal implementation.
Throughout this document, we will refer to functions, types and variables
with typewriter font. Functions and procedures have their own
subsections, and for each function or procedure we have the following
topics:
- Declaration
- The exact declaration of the function.
- Description
- What does the procedure exactly do ?
- Errors
- What errors can occur.
- See Also
- Cross references to other related functions/commands.
The cross-references come in two flavours:
- References to other functions in this manual. In the printed copy, a
number will appear after this reference. It refers to the page where this
function is explained. In the on-line help pages, this is a hyperlink,
which can be clicked to jump to the declaration.
- References to Unix manual pages. (For linux and unix related things only) they
are printed in typewriter font, and the number after it is the Unix
manual section.
All elements of the pascal language are explained in syntax diagrams.
Syntax diagrams are like flow charts. Reading a syntax diagram means getting
from the left side to the right side, following the arrows.
When the right side of a syntax diagram is reached, and it ends with a single
arrow, this means the syntax diagram is continued on the next line. If
the line ends on 2 arrows pointing to each other, then the diagram is
ended.
Syntactical elements are written like this
Keywords which must be typed exactly as in the diagram:
When something can be repeated, there is an arrow around it:
When there are different possibilities, they are listed in columns:
Note, that one of the possibilities can be empty:
This means that both the first or second possibility are optional.
Of course, all these elements can be combined and nested.
Subsections
Free Pascal Compiler
2001-09-22