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From: Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Enumeration representation clause surprise.
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:50:19 -0700 (PDT)
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On Jun 15, 12:33 pm, Robert A Duff <bobd...@shell01.TheWorld.com>
wrote:
> Adam Beneschan <a...@irvine.com> writes:

> >...I suppose you could
> > arbitrarily decide it's zero (which would make some sense
> > mathematically)
>
> Yes, I think so.
>
> >... but it seems more commonsensical to say that nothing
> > is stored there because there ain't no bits to store anything in.
>
> But that view requires a special case.
>
> The natural unsigned range for n bits, where n >= 0,
> is 0..(2**n)-1.  Which is 0..0 when n = 0.

Right, that does make sense.  I'm not convinced it matters, since all
this mathematics isn't necessariliy going to be self-evident to a poor
user.  This particular subthread was about a warning message that, I
think, could leave the user scratching their head about what it means,
and that isn't a good thing regardless of how sound is the mathematics
on which the warning is based.

                                  -- Adam