Editing UCSD Pascal (section)

==History==
UCSD p-System began around 1974 as the idea of UCSD's [[Kenneth Bowles]],<ref name="bowles2004" >{{cite web
|quote=UCSD Pascal Units probably influenced Ada Packages
|title=Some Insights for UCSD Pascal Generation
|last=Bowles
|first=Ken
|date=22 October 2004
|url=http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/ppt/KenBowles.ppt
|access-date=13 February 2011
|archive-date=4 March 2016
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304192816/http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/ppt/KenBowles.ppt
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> who believed that the number of new computing platforms coming out at the time would make it difficult for new programming languages to gain acceptance. He based UCSD Pascal on the Pascal-P2 release of the portable [[compiler]] from Zurich. He was particularly interested in [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] as a language to teach programming. UCSD introduced two features that were important improvements on the original Pascal: variable length strings, and "units" of independently compiled code (an idea included into the then-evolving Ada (programming language)). Niklaus Wirth credits the p-System, and UCSD Pascal in particular, with popularizing Pascal. It was not until the release of [[Turbo Pascal]] that UCSD's version started to slip from first place among Pascal users.

The Pascal dialect of UCSD Pascal came from the subset of Pascal implemented in Pascal-P2, which was not designed to be a full implementation of the language, but rather "the minimum subset that would self-compile", to fit its function as a bootstrap kit for Pascal compilers. UCSD added strings from BASIC, and several other implementation dependent features. Although UCSD Pascal later obtained many of the other features of the full Pascal language, the Pascal-P2 subset persisted in other dialects, notably [[Borland Pascal]], which copied much of the UCSD dialect.