2nd follow-up to my previous posting (Re: RM question concerning types)

[steve@dim.sm.unisys.com (Steven Holtsberg)]

In article <22@dim.sm.unisys.com> steve@dim.sm.unisys.com (I) write:
>I believe that if the following slight change were made to the reference
>manual, it would be OK.
>
>RM 3.5
>
>For any scalar type T or for any subtype T of a scalar type, the
>following attributes are defined:                                              7
>
>T' FIRST	Yields the lower bound of T.  The value of this attribute
>                has the same base type as T.
>                             ^^^^
>T' LAST		Yields the upper bound of T.  The value of this attribute
>                has the same base type as T.
>                             ^^^^

I was wrong.  In (RM) 3.3, it is stated that the base type
of a type is the type itself.  So, changing "type" to "base type"
does not change the above sentences.  Therefore, T, declared by

type T is range l..r

must be a subtype, not a type.  If T is taken as a subtype, then
the description in RM 3.5 is OK.

Now, the only question is why do they allow declaration of such static subtypes?
(E.g., type T is range l..r instead of subtype T is integer_type range l..r).
The only reason I can think of is to allow the particular implementation to
choose which base type to use--which of course, leads to non-portable code.