Re: Address and bit mask

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> milouz wrote on comp.lang.ada:
>>   p = (char*) (((unsigned long)p + ALIGN_MASK) & ~ALIGN_MASK);
>> How do you write that in Ada ?
>
> You don't.

Please take that seriously.  Whenever I see this kind of thing in an
Ada program during formal code review, I reject it outright.

C is a *bad* language.  It does not allow you to specify an alignment
or the size of your elements, so it forces you to do address
arithmetic.  Ada does not have these limitations, so you can say what
you are doing.  (Also: the reason why you simulate the modulo operator
(% in C) with two bitwise operations, bitwise and and bitwise not,
escapes me).

Transliterating a bad C program into the Ada syntax results in a bad
"C in Ada" program; hence the rejection and the very formal "you
don't".

Please do not take the above as an attempt to disparage you; what you
wrote is perfectly idiomatic C.  I only wanted to point out that even
perfectly idiomatic C is still bad.  That's not your fault; you are
simply the victim of bad language design.

--
Ludovic Brenta.