Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[ka@socrates.hr.lucent.com (Kenneth Almquist)]

NKSW39B@prodigy.com (Matthew Givens) wrote:
> "James S. Rogers" <JimMaureenRogers@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> Of course there are different types which use any integer-like
>> representation.  That does not make the types even approximately 
>> compatible.  Incompatible types should not be masked by using one
>> single integer representation for all of them.  
>
> Of course not, and I don't.  But judicious use of type mixing is fine.  
> My favorite example is converting to lower case: 'A' + 32.  Simple and 
> easy, in C.

Not a terribly convincing example, from my perspective.  First, there
is rarely reason to do this.  C and Ada provide library routines for
case conversion.  Calling them is "simple and easy," and they handle
the local character set, so that code which uses them is portable to the
systems using different character sets.

Second, the Ada equivalent to your example is not that complex:

	Character'val(Character'pos('A') + 32)

This is more verbose because of the conversions, but the conversions
provide a clue to anyone who has to port the code.  If you are writing
throw-away code, sticking in the conversions is no big deal.  If the
code you are writing is going to have to be maintained years from now
(either by you or someone else) it is probably worth making the dependency
on the character set a little more conspicuous than the C code does.
				Kenneth Almquist