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: 103376,2237ca8d4c74c0ac,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." Subject: Re: next "big" language?--New Pragmas Date: 1996/06/29 Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960629162726.006cbd88@mail.cts.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 162794501 sender: Ada programming language x-sender: rleif@mail.cts.com comments: cc: george@cso.cac.com, "Bill Whitaker, Ph.D." content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Date: 1996-06-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: From: Bob Leif Ada_Med Pragma Assert(x); and others have recently been discussed. This note describes a very significant problem, which I hope will be solved by one of the new proposed pragmas. The checking of units in scientific calculations could be considered an early example of type checking. Bill Whitaker was probably the first to try to solve this problem in Ada. Recently, ( Macpherson, 1996) proposed the traditional solution of initially compiling his Scientific Dimensional Integrity Package and then if there is a performance requirement reverting to another package which only performs the numerical operations. Although this is obviously preferable to not doing dimensional checking, the Ada compiler is limited in its ability to check that the numeric processes of the two packages are identical. It would be preferable, if the Ada compiler could compile the Scientific Dimensional Integrity Package or similar software and after checking that the types including the units match, optimize out all or at least most of the unit checking. G. W. Macpherson, "A Reusable Ada Package for Scientific Dimensional Integrity", ACM Ada LETTERS, Vol. XVI , Number 3, May/June 1996 pp.56-69. Robert C. Leif, Ph.D., PMIAC, Vice President & Research Director Ada_Med, A Division of Newport Instruments Tel. & Fax (619) 582-0437