Modula-3 Frequently asked questions and answers

Maintained by Olaf Wagner (wagner@elego.de), suggestions are most welcome. Last updated August 6 2002. The latest copy of this FAQ may be obtained from the Polytechnique Montreal Modula-3 Home at elego Software Solutions.

Introduction

• What is Modula-3?
• Where is Modula-3 used? Is it used in industry?
• Is commercial support available?
• Where can I get documents and information on Modula-3?
• Is Modula-3 a superset of Modula-2?
• Comparisons between Modula-3 and other languages?
• What implementations are available, how do they compare?
• Can I contribute Modula-3 software?
• Why use Modula-3?

Troubleshooting

• Why program receives a SEGV signal under the debugger?
• Problems with threads, fork and VTALARM?
• X libraries not found?
• What means Missing RTHooks or similar messages?
• M3build versus Make or why m3 does not work?
• Why are exceptions raised by X or Network Objects applications?
• What is the story with Trestle and OpenWindows?
• Why so many problems installing on Solaris?

Miscellaneous Questions

• Can I get Modula-3 other than by FTP or HTTP?
• How to call Modula-3 procedures from a C program?
• How to call C procedures from a Modula-3 program?
• Can Modula-3 code call C++ and vice-versa?
• How to copy heap objects?
• How to get output messages to appear immediately (flushing writers)?
• How to read a single character as soon as typed?
• Why is Hello World so large?
• What is SRC Modula-3?
• Why are there strange pragmas for Locking levels and other properties?

Design Issues

• Why objects and interfaces?
• What is the purpose of BRANDED and REVEAL?
• Can a program recover from running out of virtual memory?
• Why uppercase keywords?
• Why CONST Comments in Variables Declarations?