"Nobody benchmarks anymore"

I don't think it matters so much _how_ it's formed as _that_ it's formed. Whether Pascal is more helpful in forming it than something else is another question, depending on (at least) what the "something else" is. My own opinion, for "something else" values somewhere around the C/C++ range, is that Pascal, or something like it, is helpful for the early stages but not the later stages of such training: it is helpful for teaching the rules, the stage when the rules should always be followed, but it gets in the way for the later stages, the stages when the rules are already learned and the issue is learning when to break them and why. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B