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From: Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com>
Subject: Re: Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package?
Date: 1996/11/13
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Date: 1996-11-13T00:00:00+00:00
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robin wrote:
> 
> PL/I picture editing is a lot simpler than using Ada's,
> which -- if implemented by the compiler -- applies to decimal types.

Absolutely true. Ada implements strong type checking, which can make
writing Ada more complex. The advtantages of strong type checking tend
to outweigh this, however, particularly for large and/or critical systems.

>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."

To read more, see:

  http://www.adahome.com/LRM/95/rm95html/rm9x-intro.html#goals

or, for even more information about Ada:

  http://info.acm.org/sigada/
  http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/
  http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC/

> For *any* data type -- binary integer, decimal integer,
> float, complex, etc, PL/I has full picture editing.
> 
> It's ony necessary to use a simple line such as:
> 
> put edit (n) (P'-99999999');
> 
> or, for the real mccoy,
> 
> put edit (d) (P'999.V999');     [d is decimal fixed with fraction,
>                                  or floating-point, PICTURE, etc]
> 
> 
> which is a lot less than the (up to) 82 lines of Ada code
> suggested by various posters to force zeros to print.

Of course, once you have the zero-fill package (or whatever
other abstraction you intend to reuse), the number of lines
you have to write drops quite a bit. With a well-designed
abstraction, you can also have your compiler detect when you
accidently did a put of one of those "etc."s when you meant to
put an Apple_Type (or whatever). I assume PL/I has an equivalent
capability?

"Furthermore, error-prone notations have been avoided, and the
syntax of the language avoids the use of encoded forms in favor
of more English-like constructs."

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