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From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Decimal Floating point was RE: Information Systems Annex was RE:
 Dispatching and generics - language lawyer question
Date: 16 Aug 2002 08:29:50 -0700
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"Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1029448502.10542.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> From: Bob Leif

> Since intermediate values in a calculation how a low 
> frequency of being
> printed out, the simplest solution to digits is to leave 
> it at a fixed
> value.

This is also incomprehensible in the Ada context. In PL/1
and in COBOL, the precision and scaling of intermediate
results is not explicit. In PL/1 there are implicit rules
which turn out to have very surprising effects, and are
generally considered a signal failure.

In COBOL, intermediate precision is implementation defined
and as a consequence most COBOL coding standards forbid the
use of COMPUTE, with the possible exception of

   COMPUTE A = B ** C

since the exponentiation operator is only available in the
COMPUTE verb. But in this case there is no intermediate
result so all is well.

In Ada, we have a much better design where the programmer
is forced to specifically give the precision and scaling
of all intermediate results where an issue arises (addition
and subtraction do not present a problem, it is division
and multiplication that cause trouble).

So I don't understand your comment about intermediate
values in the context of Ada fixed-point.