From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c95a73ec6ed5f174 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Floating point problem Date: 1997/03/30 Message-ID: <1997Mar30.113716.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 229466952 X-Nntp-Posting-Host: eisner.decus.org References: <199703271518_MC2-1360-15BE@compuserve.com> <1997Mar28.095005.1@eisner> <333E18D8.1F84@bix.com> X-Nntp-Posting-User: KILGALLEN X-Trace: 859739841/4643 Organization: LJK Software Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <333E18D8.1F84@bix.com>, Tom Moran writes: > But, knowing that FPU detection code can be found in Intel docs, is it > possible for a user program to run that code early enough (ie before the > RTS or elaboration code has crashed and burned) to give a nice error > message to the user? And if Ada is intended to be source-compatible between platforms, why should a programmer need to know the Intel instruction set and differences betwee chips. Power-PC and Alpha computers also have certain instructions which available on some chip models but not others. Since compiler developers by definition must deal with such instruction set issues, the Ada implementation would seem to be the most efficient place for such efforts to be expended. That does not solve the issue of finding funding for compiler developers to add such support. But if Ada is to become more widely used ultimately the cost of even saying RTFM in response to trouble calls will drive detecting runtime failures in a helpful fashion. This sort of attitude has already been used for compile-time as no compiler developer has thought it enough to give a minimal (RM-allowed ?) level of compilation diagnostics by delivering only a single "not a good Ada program" message in response to a compilation attempt. Larry Kilgallen