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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1901f265c928a511 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: controlnews3.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!bigfeed2.bellsouth.net!news.bellsouth.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <40BDB944.3060605@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Typing in Ada References: <2i1t1lFij4g5U1@uni-berlin.de> <9ZRuc.8410$hB2.7017@nwrdny03.gnilink.net> <40BCE5E8.4040305@tidorum.fi> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:26:31 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.3.141 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net 1086175591 209.165.3.141 (Wed, 02 Jun 2004 04:26:31 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 04:26:31 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: controlnews3.google.com comp.lang.ada:1020 Date: 2004-06-02T11:26:31+00:00 List-Id: Sometimes its an issue for verification. High reliability systems often prohibit the inclusion of any code that is not necessary to meet a requirement because it presents an opportunity to introduce an error that would not need to occur because there is no requirement to do this. So a similar argument can be made for restricting the number of apples even if the spec doesn't say Thou Shalt Not Count 101 Apples. Kind of a case of avoiding building the proverbial brick outhouse - don't make it do anything more than is required because you can't then be sure it will handle those cases correctly. But then again, there are few of those sort of systems and far many more of the type where this would not be an issue. Then saying "At minimum, 100 apples must be supported..." is fine and if the programmer gives you 2**32 apples, it probably doesn't hurt anything. MDC Wes Groleau wrote: > > In a way, you are correct. But why must we put > so much effort into preventing behavior that is > not prohibited just because it is not required? > > Does the specification say ... ? > "The program shall not tolerate apple counts higher than 100" > > Did some domain expert persuade the programmers that 101 apples > was not reasonable? > > In other words, when a specification says > "A count of 100 must be supported," the > programmers should NOT mentally rewrite it > to "Counts larger than 100 must not be supported." > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "Face it ladies, its not the dress that makes you look fat. Its the FAT that makes you look fat." -- Al Bundy ======================================================================