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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: Binary files vs Portablity vs Ada
Date: 1999/11/09
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In article <3827555C.D8E87932@averstar.com>,
  Tucker Taft <stt@averstar.com> wrote:
> It is always a bit frustrating to follow discussions like this
> where people keep arguing about how this or that is not
> "guaranteed" by the Ada RM, when other languages have far
> fewer guarantees to begin with, and no strictly-obeyed
> standard and validation suite available.

I very much agree. The real issue here is that if you want to
write portable code, you need to combine a lot of relevant
pragmatic knowledge with the material in the RM. The IA helps
provide that knowledge. Yes, I know people would like to reduce
portability to simple compliance with what is guaranteed in
the standard, but as Tuck says, you will be disappointed if
you try this approach. There is no substitute for intelligent
application of pragmatic knowledge when it comes to writing
portable code.

In the case of C, portable code typically contains many things
that are not guaranteed by the standard, e.g. that int has a
sensible range. What Ada does is to make this kind of thing
very explicit in the RM (in the form of implementation advice),
and then vendors are required to note if they do not follow this
advice, so you are on much more well defined ground than with
any other standardized language when it comes to writing
portable code.


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