VMS Help PASCAL, /GRANULARITY=keyword D=/GRANULARITY=QUADWORD  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

                                   OpenVMS Alpha only

 Directs the compiler to generate additional code to preserve  the
 indicated  granularity.   Granularity  refers  to  the  amount of
 storage that can be modified when updating a variable.

 You can specify the following values for keyword:

       o  BYTE

       o  LONGWORD

       o  QUADWORD (default)

 To update a variable that is  smaller  than  a  longword,  Compaq
 Pascal  must issue multiple instructions to fetch the surrounding
 longword or quadword, update the memory  inside  to  longword  or
 quadword,  and  then  write  the  longword  or quadword back into
 memory.

 If multiple processes are writing into memory that  is  contained
 in  the  same  longword  or  quadword, you might incur inaccurate
 results unless /GRANULARITY=BYTE or  some  other  synchronization
 mechanism is used.