Re: Ada 83 - avoiding unchecked conversions.

[Ted Dennison <dennison@escmail.orl.lmco.com>]

Ensco Vendor wrote:
> 
> we have two 16 bit integers which we need to assemble into a single 32
> bit integer (one is high order, the other low order).  We wish to avoid
> unchecked conversion if we can.  Is there a standard accepted way of
> doing this?
> 

Does the target object have to be a 32-bit integer, or does it just have
to be the *size* of a 32-bit integer? Often times folks will back
themselves into a corner where they have to do unchecked conversion
because they didn't choose their data types very well.

Of course, often there is some sort of I/O or system binding that
REQUIRES use of an unnatural data type. In that case, unchecked
conversion is the proper tool for the job. Doing any kind of semantic
calisthenics simply to aviod unchecked conversion is liable to cause
more problems than are solved.

-- 
T.E.D.          
             |  Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.lmco.com  |
             |  Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net               |
             |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison          |