[fpc-devel] EBCDIC (was On a port of Free Pascal to the IBM 370)

[michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012, steve smithers wrote:

>
> Finally, the suggestions about developing FreePascal/370 as an ASCII compiler
> seem somewhat pointless to me.  Why would anyone want to use an ASCII compiler
> on an EBCDIC system?  I accept fully that producing an EBCDIC version will
> present problems, but if this compiler is actually going to be used by anyone,
> these have to be overcome.

I think the reason for producing an ASCII version first is very simple: 
All FPC sources - including the compiler - are in ASCII encoding.

Whatever is made, the hypothetical compiler will need to understand ASCII in
the first place, or it cannot recompile itself or it's RTL...

Michael.