Re: Code portability question

[Mike Werner <mwerner@wvu.edu>]

Tucker Taft wrote:
> With no other information, I would favor the second group, though
> at least a little more information would help tremendously.
> The representation and detailed properties of floating point numbers
> are irrelevant to most programs which are not doing serious number crunching.

That's one of the points that we argued.  Unfortunately, information is
kind of slim here.  It was the other guy that wrote the code. 
Supposedly, he is going to try and find it to show me.  If at all
possible I will get a copy.
 
> Can you indicate the nature of the rewrite?  Give an example
> of what the old and new versions looked like, and in what way
> the old version failed on the Unix server.  It also wouldn't
> hurt to identify the CPUs, operating systems, and compilers involved.

He did not provide specifics on the rewrite - only that it was a
substantial portion of his code.  The failure before the rewrite had to
do with intialization of floats.  He claimed that the failure stemmed
from the fact that his PC's CPU (AMD K6) architecture was so different
that it screwed up his program.

The department's server - Unix mainframe (actual hardware unknown)
running either SysV R4 or SunOS 5.5.1 (it seems to report both) with
gnat 3.10p as the compiler.

His machine - home PC with an AMD K6 CPU running (assumptions start
here) Windoze 9x with AdaGide as the compiler.  I am assuming AdaGide as
that is what the department recommends for those that don't already have
an Ada compiler.

I did essentially the same assignments on an Intel box running Linux
with gnat 3.10p as my compiler, and my brother used a Windoze 95 box
(unknown "intel compatabile" CPU - possibly actual intel) with AdaGide
as the compiler when we took the class.  Neither of us ever had to do a
rewrite when we uploaded to the Unix server.  
-- 
Mike Werner  KA8YSD           |  "Where do you want to go today?"
ICQ# 12934898                 |  "As far from Redmond as possible!"
'91 GS500E                    |
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