Ada and Decimal Arithmetic

[Marc.Graham@SEI.CMU.EDU]

I was fascinated to note that in neither Ed Berard's post on Ada and
commercial usage, nor in any of its responses, was the issue of Ada
and decimal arithmetic mentioned. I would have thought that Ada's lack
of support for decimal arithmetic is a major impediment to the use of
Ada in commercial applications. Indeed, if I were asked to render a
professional judgement on Ada to a commercial client, lack of decimal
support would in itself be enough to reject it.

Does anyone share this view? Does anyone have a solution (in the form
of Ada code)? Does anyone know of a compiler which supports the rep
clause: for T'small use T'delta; when delta is a power of ten? Has anyone 
else heard the rumor: "It'll be fixed in the next release" (of the ACVC)?

Marc H. Graham                    Software Engineering Institute
marc@sei.cmu.edu                  Carnegie Mellon University
(412) 268 7784                    Pittsburgh, PA   15213