Changing Religeon

[Sam Couter]

Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at pcug.org.au> wrote:
> My understanding is that once compiled, it can compile itself - or you
> can compile it on a commercial pascal compiler.

I figured it would be able to compile itself, if it's written in pascal
and is a pascal compiler. But what I meant to find out is if it can
build itself from (next to) nothing if a pascal compiler is not already
available on the system.

GCC is a package which does what I describe. It comes with a small
compiler written in assembly, uses the platform's assembler and linker
to build itself, then uses that to proceed to build the compiler proper.
So you can compile a compiler written in C without having a C compiler
already installed.

It doesn't really matter though, I'm not really a fan of Pascal, so I'm
not likely to use the compiler. I only asked out of interest, and
because I recommend caution when downloading binaries. The old urban
myth about Dennis Ritchie's (??) self-replicating trojan in the compiler
comes to mind. Check the Jargon File for "back door": 

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/back-door.html

Be careful... One entry leads to another, and before you know it you've
wasted a whole afternoon reading parts of the Jargon file and wetting
yourself laughing.
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:scouter at bigpond.net.au
Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie at debian.org
                    |  jabber:sam at jabber.topic.com.au
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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