The purpose of this book is to present the syntax of standard Pascal. It assumes that readers have acquired problem-solving skills and learned about problem-solving structures and algorithm development. This book has been designed with the philosophy t hat problem solving is best learned independent of and before learning a programming language. Therefore, the book concentrates on presenting the syntax of the language and the application of the syntax in a programming environment. The book can thus be i deally used in an academic setting where problem-solving concepts are taught before introducing a programming language. It can also be used for teaching standard Pascal as the second programming language.

This book was originally conceived as a supplement to An Introduction to Computer Science: A Structured Problem-Solving Approach written by the authors as a possible textbook for a foundation course for computer science majors. This book is still a good supplement to such texts. However, as the writing of the book proceeded, we removed all the references to the main text and developed it as an independent textbook.

This book consists of three chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 introduces Pascal syntax to the extent that a person learns enough of the language to write simple programs. This chapter should be covered completely and thoroughly. Structured data types such as arrays, records, sets, and files are covered in Chapter 2. Pointer types are also discussed in this chapter. It is important to cover this chapter completely as it enables the readers to use the richness of Pascal through its capability of d efining various data types. Several extensions to standard pascal exist at various installations. Chapter 3 describes the syntax of some of the popular statements included in these extensions. This chapter should be covered only if a relevant extension is available at the local installation. Finally, standard pascal functions, procedures, reserved words, and identifiers, as well as the ASCII and EBCDIC codes, are listed in the appendix for reference purposes.