Colon

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:


The symbol :, pronounced “colon”, is used in Pascal in several ways:

  • in an identifier declaration it separates the type
    • most notably in var sections
    • but also in const sections (in case of explicitely typed constants)
    • procedure and function parameters have a type, too
    • and return values of functions (including operator overloads)
    • as well as properties
    • in general, everywhere where a new identifier associated with some memory, is introduced (also custom structured type definitions)
  • in case selectors it closes a match-list
  • in label definitions the colon seperates the instruction from the label name
  • also some routines, especially the Str, write and writeLn procedures accept further parameters via colon separated arguments
  • Offset / segment separation under DOS Mem[$B800:$0000]

The following example shows the most prevalent usage scenarios:

 1program colonDemo(input, output, stderr);
 2
 3procedure numberReport(const i: int64);
 4begin
 5	case i of
 6		low(i)..-1:
 7		begin
 8			writeLn('Your number is negative. ☹');
 9		end;
10		1..high(i):
11		begin
12			// right aligns to a width of 24 characters
13			writeLn(i:24);
14		end;
15		else
16		begin
17			writeLn('You''ve entered zero.');
18		end;
19	end;
20end;
21
22var
23	i: int64;
24
25begin
26	writeLn('Enter a number:');
27	readLn(i);
28	numberReport(i);
29end.

other remarks

  • Colon appears in the assignment operator :=.
  • In ASCII the character colon : has the value 58.



navigation bar: topic: Pascal symbols
single characters

+ (plus)  •  - (minus)  •  * (asterisk)  •  / (slash)
= (equal)  •  > (greater than)  •  < (less than)
. (period)  •  : (colon)  •  ; (semi colon)
^ (hat)  •  @ (at)
$ (dollar sign)  •  & (ampersand)  •  # (hash)
' (single quote)

character pairs

<> (not equal)  •  <= (less than or equal)  •  := (becomes)  •  >= (greater than or equal)

 •  >< (symmetric difference)  •  // (double slash)