Re: Characters with codes >= 128

[barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

In article <8709100440.AA04224@rand-unix.rand.org> hermix!colbert@rand-unix.ARPA writes:
>As an additional comment, at the recent SIGAda Conference, Dr. Dewer indicated
>that Unchecked_Conversion could be legally implemented to always return 0 no
>matter what the "value" of the source object was.  I did not get a chance to
>full nail him down on what he ment by this comment, so may be he will respond
>to this message.

I presume that this refers to the fact that the language doesn't
specify what the result of Unchecked_Conversion is, rather it leaves
it implementation-defined.  In that case, an implementation may return
any value, and returning 0 in all cases would be valid.  It's not a
very useful behavior, but it isn't the purpose of a language spec to
define a useful language, merely a portable one.  Since you must check
the implementation spec to find out what the result is, you'll know
whether it is useful.

---
Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
seismo!think!barmar