Ada policy

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> Hmm .. I admit I am not an expert in C99 but I thought that stdint.h only
> required a very limited number of integer types, basically the powers of 2.
> So for example, there is no equivalent of
> 
>    type R is range -2**23 .. 2**23-1;
> 
> which you expect to map into 24 bits on a 24 bit machine, and 36 bits on
> a 36 bit machine.

Ah! No, that is *not* something that can be done in Standard C; I was 
unaware that Ada supported such a capability. See why I don't comment on 
Ada's capabilities? ;)

I understood that you were discussing portability (based on your focus 
on int), which is often a matter of making certain that type "X" has a 
compatible range across multiple platforms. Thus the stdint.h definitions.

That is, of course, assuming you have a Standard C compiler across your 
target platforms. :)

> Well I must say I was a bit surprised at the claim that it was arguable
> whether large applications could be practically written sticking strictly
> to ISO C (almost as surprising as Zack's claim that this was clearly
> impractical for Ada :-) I also found the idea that the only way to
> achieve portability is through use of conditional compilation to be
> surprising (I doubt this is true).

I've written a lot of portable C and C++; due to the lack of 
standards-compliant compilers or the use of platform-dependent 
facilities (e.g., GUIs), such code often contains conditional statements.

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