Editing Apple Pascal (section)

==Comparison of Pascal OS with DOS 3.2==
Apple Pascal Operating System introduced a new disk format.<ref>Apple Pascal was designed to take advantage of the then new 140[[kilobyte|K]] 5.25" [[floppy disks]].</ref> Instead of dividing the disk into 256-byte sectors as in DOS 3.2, Apple Pascal divides it into "blocks" of 512 bytes each.<ref>{{harvnb|Apple|1980|p=25}}</ref> The p-System also introduced  a different method for saving and retrieving files. Under Apple DOS, files were saved to any available sector that the OS could find, regardless of location. Over time, this could lead to [[file system fragmentation]], slowing access to the disk. Apple Pascal attempted to rectify this by saving only to consecutive blocks on the disk.<ref>{{harvnb|Apple|1981|p=162}}</ref>

Other innovations introduced in the [[file system]] included the introduction of a [[timestamp]] feature.  Previously only a file's name, basic type, and size would be shown.  Disks could also be named for the first time.<ref>Under Apple DOS, disks can only be given a volume number. Apple Pascal disk volume names can be up to seven characters in length. See {{harvnb|Apple|1980|p=27}}</ref>

Limitations of the p-System included new restrictions on the naming of files.<ref>Apple DOS allowed filenames up to thirty characters long and any [[ASCII]] character could be used, Apple Pascal dropped the length to fifteen characters and allowed only letters, numbers and periods to be used. See {{harvnb|Apple|1980|p=30}}</ref> 
Writing files only on consecutive blocks also created problems, because over time free space tended to become too fragmented to store new files.  A utility called <code>KRUNCH</code> was included in the package to consolidate free space.<ref>{{harvnb|Apple|1980|p=49}}</ref>

The biggest problem with the Apple Pascal system was that it was too big to fit on one floppy disk. This meant that on a system with only one floppy disk drive, frequent [[disk swapping]] was needed. A system needed at least two disk drives in order to use the operating system properly.