CompuServe Messages

I'm having LOADS of trouble with the M2S floating point and string routines. The Real and LongReal conversions to strings are universally off by 4.99. The TRUNC routine is off by 1 (e.g truncates 6.6E1 to 65!). Anyway, I tried to build my own conversion routines in M2S and found many difficulties with string processing. To look like the existin libary routines, I pass an ARRAY OF CHAR VAR to a routine, load it CHR by CHR and then try to terminate it with a null or linefeed. Whatever I put at the end of the string using InsertSubString causes the machine to crash when run eventhough the compiler lets both of those characters go by for inserting into the substring. Each time I try to use Modula 2 I find the restrictions driving me to C. Very disappointing since I don't have a C compiler. You can't write printer drivers in Modula 2, can't link M2 to other language object modules, and the string processing is very cumbersome. Its just very frustrating to sit down to write a quicky routine to patch some Desktop Budget files (Gold DIsk can't seem to ballance accounts very well, and they don't give you the lattitude to change it in the application) and end up spendind weeks trying to work around both problems in the compiler and unreasonable restrictions in the language. Seems like Modula2 is good for the basic "hello world" stuff you do in school, but so far I've not been able to complete one project with it. Always end up having to use C, assem of sometimes even BASIC! Am I the only one having these trouble with M2S/Modula 2? wmc