Re: Rep-spec question

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <80ek3j$qnq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> But an even stronger statement than you made, such as "this
> works on all
> known compilers", is not the same as "this is guaranteed to
work on all
> compilers". It is not.


Sorry, I don't understand. You obviously do NOT use rep clauses
on a compiler that does not claim annex C conformance. Noting
that rep clauses are not guaranteed to be implemented in the
absence of annex C is of course true, but completely
uninteresting, since no one in practice who knows what they
are doing even a little bit would make the mistake of thinking
otherwise. In practice, all compilers that are intended for use
in environments where rep clauses make sense implement Annex C
in any case, so in practice, there is no problem here. Yes, I
suppose someone could be sufficiently unaware that they would
use a compiler that does not implement annex C and be suprised,
but that's just a special case of people not knowing the
language, and being surprised by their lack of knowledge.

If you are saying that you have a compiler that claims annex
C compliance and does not implement all the recommended clauses
in chapter 13, then the compiler is non-conforming, or more
pragmatically, you have found a bug in the compiler and should
report it.

It for sure is the case in Ada 95 that optional annexes are
optional, and (how amazing) compilers that do not implement
optional annexes cannot be expected by users to provide the
facilities in those annexes!


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