Modula-2

Modula-2 is a programming language invented by Niklaus Wirth, who was also the inventor of Pascal. If you liked Pascal, you'll like Modula-2 even better.

If you're not familiar with the language, fetch the document Modula-2 for Pascal programmers.

The information on this page has a bias towards Modula-2 for the PC, because that happens to be the machine I use most often. For more general information, check the "other information sources" mentioned below.

Contents

See also the following separate documents:

Useful software and libraries

Remark: the above is my personal list of things I've discovered and which look useful. It makes no claim to be comprehensive. There are still a few broken links for which I haven't yet had the time to search for replacements.

Commercially available software

I'm not aware of many net links for commercial suppliers, but you might want to check out the following links. See also the compilers section below; compiler vendors generally also sell related products such as libraries.

Compilers for the PC

Compilers for OS/2 are listed on a separate page.

Much of this section is now obsolete, because the compiler vendors have either gone out of business or have moved to other interests such as Java. (A language that would be interesting if it had the courage to cut loose from its C origins. Can you believe that Java, supposedly a high-level language, still has zero-based array indexing and the brain-dead C "for" loops?) I have not gone through a detailed check, so be aware that you might find some inactive web links.

The open source community is still active in supporting the language. There are two projects I have heard of so far.

The main reason why I have not evaluated either of the above is that neither of them has yet been ported to OS/2. I have to use Windows at work - and there I use XDS Modula-2 plus a variety of C compilers - and anyone who has had that experience will understand why I don't use Windows except when I have no choice. I will seriously consider switching to Linux when an objective-oriented desktop is available, but for now I consider Linux to be seriously short of user-friendly software. I do use Linux at work - it's pretty much the only available platform for serious real-time engineering applications - but as a development platform it's a huge pain in the posterior.

Here are the shareware or free Modula-2 compilers that I know about for DOS (including Windows) or Linux. (Please contact me if you know about others. Note that many pointers in this list are probably obsolete.)

For more information, try e-mail to modula@ipd.info.uni-karlsruhe.de.

General comment: these compilers are not up to the "turbo" quality that PC users have come to expect. If you want a good user interface and/or advanced features then you'll have to pay real money.

A related product, also free for research/educational purposes:

The Net M2 project was an initiative by a group of volunteers to create a freeware Modula-2 compiler. The project now appears to be in a state of suspended animation.

Commercially available compilers include:

(This list is probably incomplete - I'd welcome feedback from other people.) If you're having trouble finding any of these, check this list of suppliers.

Compilers for other machines

Check the list of suppliers, or look here for more general information.
This information was compiled by Peter Moylan.
Last modified 22 March 2010.