Re: Question for the folks who designed Ada95

[Marin David Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

Corey Ashford wrote:

> Thanks, I did find that reference after posting, but I found the
> explanation lame.  They didn't want to introduce a new
> operator syntax and didn't want a function with a name
> part of the language definition.
> How was the max and min functions handled?  With attributes...
> I don't see how this case is really any different.
> Perhaps they didn't think of it, or at least didn't address
> this possibility in the RM.
> 
One possible explanation for not making it an attribute is that it would
then have to apply to all possible modular types even if there were no
natural, underlying machine instruction to support it. For example if
you had:

type My_Type is mod 13 ;
X : My_Type ;

You would have to support:

X := My_Type'Shift_Left (X) ;

I'm not even sure if such an operation would make sense, much less be
something that could be implemented at all efficiently.

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
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