Re: Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package?

["Larry J. Elmore" <ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net>]

robin <rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote in article
<56trsm$f5a$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>...
> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>>>From the Introduction section of ISO/IEC 8652:1995: 
>>>"The need for languages that promote reliability and simplify
maintenance
>>>is well established. Hence emphasis was placed on program readability
over
>>>ease of writing."
>>> 
>>>Ada clearly failed in this aspect.
>>> 
>>This is not clear at all.
>> 
> ---It is abundantly clear that it failed as to ease of writing.

Wait a minute, Robin. First you quote ISO/IEC 8652:1995 where it justifies
the decision to favor program readability (to promote reliability and
maintainability) over ease of writing and then state that Ada clearly
failed in this respect. Then you immediately turn around and state that Ada
failed in ease of writing. As you had just pointed out, it was never
designed with ease of writing as a major priority (nor should it have been,
since all major software is read many, many more times than it is written,
mostly by programmers other than the original designer). My point being
that it *did not* fail in that respect as you mistakenly claim. It exactly
met its design goals! 

> Various postings suggested that the conversion could be done in up to
> 82 lines of Ada code, whereas PL/I requires one simple line.

"Up to 82 lines of Ada"? Really, Robin... I've no doubt I could replicate
some aspect of Ada 95 that PL/1 lacks in "up to" any number of lines of
PL/1 I care to bloat it up to...


-- 
Larry J. Elmore

"A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions."
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, "Meditations," c. 170 A.D.

"The universe is change; our lives what our thoughts make of it."
-- Ibid.