From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d3bcc180a8b0eea4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 108abf,d3bcc180a8b0eea4 X-Google-Attributes: gid108abf,public From: "Marin D. Condic" Subject: Re: [Fwd: F22 completes 11% of its Flight tests] Date: 2000/01/17 Message-ID: <38835B50.B2EF88C6@quadruscorp.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 573841368 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <387C8859.621FA20B@netscape.net> <387CC1C0.4C57E34C@quadruscorp.com> <387CEE4A.3965@Ganymede.com> <387F8E50.11D27E14@quadruscorp.com> <85oclj$nbp$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <387FCA73.3A61@Ganymede.com> <85ok6v$iee$1@ssauraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com> <3880CCC7.261957BC@quadruscorp.com> Organization: Quadrus Corporation X-Sender: "Marin D. Condic" (Unverified) X-Server-Date: 17 Jan 2000 18:11:38 GMT Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,rec.aviation.military Date: 2000-01-17T18:11:38+00:00 List-Id: jtarver wrote: > I am refering to VAX Ada compilers with extended instruction sets. Do you > have a reading comprehension problem? > Everyone here has been trying to politely address your concerns so it would be nice if you were to reciprocate the courtesy. We have already stated that the DEC Ada compiler for the VAX did not implement any syntactic features outside of the language standard. The compiler did provide some system dependent packages and pragmas as permitted by the standard and the documentation did highlight any "implementation defined" behaviors as required by the standard, but there were *no* extensions to the syntax of the language. We have asked what you mean by "extended instruction sets" because clearly you are using the terminology in some way that is not the common understanding. "VAX" itself means "Virtual Address eXtended" because the VAX architecture was conceived as an "extention" to the "instruction set" of the PDP11 computer. That clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with Ada or portability. The instruction set for the VAX architecture was never contracted for by the government to be some sort of "portable" machine instruction set, nor did DEC ever mean for Data General to be able to interpret VAX executable code on their machines or whatever confusion may exist about this. "Instruction Sets" in most common usage refer to machine language instructions - the actual zeros and ones that the processor interprets. Ada permits an implementation to define a mechanism for inserting machine language instructions into an Ada program. This is necessary for those of us who do embedded programming and need to actually get at the hardware and manipulate it. It is, of necessity, machine specific, just as similar machine code insertions in C or Fortran or whatever are going to be. If this is what you are referring to, then of course it will be non portable. Name me a language that permits machine code insertions which is? If by "extended instruction sets" you mean to imply that DEC Ada would parse out tokens from an Ada program which were not defined in the LRM and interpret those tokens in some DEC defined manner, then you need to show us an example, because I know that I am unaware of any such extensions to the language in that compiler and I have used it extensively. DEC did not in any way extend the Ada language by, for example, providing a "do...while" looping construct, or a "case" statement with fallthrough semantics or any such thing. Your claim that Ada (in particular DEC Ada) is not portable runs counter to the experience of those of us who do it every day for a living. If you believe this to be the case, you should post an example of what you mean. MDC -- ============================================================= Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - 1.800.555.3393 1015-116 Atlantic Boulevard, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233 http://www.quadruscorp.com/ m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin." -- Allan Meltzer, Economist =============================================================