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From: rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (robin)
Subject: Re: Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package?
Date: 1996/11/19
Message-ID: <56rgou$r4k$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1
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 <327FB8A3.745B@itg-sepg.logicon.com> <55ubsh$lh0$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
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organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1
nntp-posting-user: rav
Date: 1996-11-19T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:

	>robin wrote:
	>> 
	>> PL/I picture editing is a lot simpler than using Ada's,
	>> which -- if implemented by the compiler -- applies to decimal types.

	>Absolutely true. Ada implements strong type checking, which can make
	>writing Ada more complex. The advtantages of strong type checking tend
	>to outweigh this, however, particularly for large and/or critical systems.

	>From the Introduction section of ISO/IEC 8652:1995:

	>"The need for languages that promote reliability and simplify maintenance
	>is well established. Hence emphasis was placed on program readability over
	>ease of writing."

Ada clearly failed in this aspect.

	>> For *any* data type -- binary integer, decimal integer,
	>> float, complex, etc, PL/I has full picture editing.
	>> 
	>> It's ony necessary to use a simple line such as:
	>> 
	>> put edit (n) (P'-99999999');
	>> 
	>> or, for the real mccoy,
	>> 
	>> put edit (d) (P'999.V999');     [d is decimal fixed with fraction,
	>>                                  or floating-point, PICTURE, etc]
	>> 
	>> which is a lot less than the (up to) 82 lines of Ada code
	>> suggested by various posters to force zeros to print.

	>Of course, once you have the zero-fill package (or whatever
	>other abstraction you intend to reuse), the number of lines
	>you have to write drops quite a bit.

No excuse for having everyone who wants to use such a facility
to have to write it.

It is, after all, avalable ina number of languages including COBOL
and PL/I.

The simplicity and usefulness of PL/I in producing
zero suppression/insertion of characters/general editing/
in a variety of forms (integer, fixed-point, floating-point) and suitable
for business and science cannot be refuted.

As I indicated earlier, just one short line will suffice! :

put edit (d) (P'999.V999');