Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is a structured programming language designed by Niklaus Wirth for expressing algorithms with explicit data types, procedures and organized control statements. Its arrays and records support concrete data organization, while nested procedures permit local decomposition of a program.

For example, a procedure summing an array can declare an integer loop index and an accumulator, initialize the accumulator to zero, and use a for loop to add each entry. Stating the supported integer range remains necessary: a clear source-level sum can still overflow bounded arithmetic. Niklaus Wirth's account dates the Pascal project to1968–1972 and records an operational first compiler in1970, followed by use in introductory teaching.^[ref]