Ada policy

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> Actually the point in Ada is that you don't need to "cater for
> portability across different implementations", since it is perfectly
> practical to write in completely standard portable Ada. In C, you
> can't help running into portability issues because fundamental
> definitions like the characteristics of int are implementation
> dependent, and so you are forced to mess with conditional
> compilation.

I am certainly not an Ada expert, so I can't comment on its abilities 
(or lack thereof).

However, I *can* comment on you understanding of C. Standard C (approved 
about five years ago) allows explicit declarations of integer sizes via 
the types in stdint.h. What you have encountered is either old code, or 
code written by people who are not aware of explicit type sizes.

This sort of "my language is better than your language" stuff is just 
plain silly, from any side of the issue.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Software Invention for High-Performance Computing