Re: The state of functional programming

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:01:35 +0000 (UTC), Warren wrote:
> 
>> Dmitry A. Kazakov expounded in
>> news:17hhchqy1a2si.1akul43vk1sd9.dlg@40tude.net: 
>>
>>> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:19:49 +0000 (UTC), Warren wrote:
> 
>>>> But FP cannot always solve that "problem".
>>> Same in Ada. Not every legal Ada program is compilable. 
>> If an Ada program doesn't compile, then the programmer
>> hasn't spelled out the "how" correctly has he?  
> 
>    X : constant := 2**(2**(2**(2**9999_9999))) + 1:
> 
> is pretty much clear "how", legal, but not compilable.

... because the binary representation of the value of X needs too many 
bits, you mean? But I don't think that a compiler is required to 
represent the value in binary form *at compile time*; it could use a 
formulaic representation, which needs only a small amount of memory, as 
shown by your source line. Depending on how X is used in the rest of the 
program, this could make it possible to compile the program.

Of course I agree that a normal Ada compiler will not be able to compile 
such things.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
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