Re: [OT] Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada)

["REH" <me@you.com>]

"Ioannis Vranos" <ivr@remove.this.grad.com> wrote in message 
news:1110607809.837000@athnrd02...
> I am pretty sure one can write a library that can enable just that.
>
>
> Now that I am thinking of it, there are some, and let's begin from Boost:
>
>
> http://www.boost.org/libs/integer/integer.htm
>
>
> #include <boost/integer.hpp>
>
>
> int main()
> {
>     using namespace boost;
>
>     int_t<24>::least my_var;
> }
>
>
>
> with "least" being the smallest built-in type that supports the given bit 
> count.
>
>
>
> You see, that's easy. :-) Just "plug in" Boost.
>
Yes, I'd used Boost.  It's an amazing library, but the above is not 
equivalent to what I wrote.  The major different, and the feature I'd mainly 
like to see in C++ in that the definition of Byte above is a unique type. 
It can participate in overload resolution.  Different typedefs using 
int_t<24> are not distinct.  I know this can be achieved with an extra 
template parameter, enums, or classes, but I don't want to go to that kind 
of effort just to tell the compiler to treat it as a unique type.  Another 
difference,  in C++ you cannot create an array of int_t<3> and have all the 
element be exactly 3 bits.  Using 'size and 'component_size (or even pragma 
pack), in Ada you can.  I can also specify a range other than zero to max. 
You may not care (as your other post suggests), but for fault tolerance, I 
do.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not one of the C++ bashers (I think 
language-bashing is nonsense).  C++ is my favorite language.  But Ada has 
some really nice features I'd like to see in it.  I don't care about the 
forced range checking.  I don't think that "fits" C++.  I would however, 
like to be able to easily define unique types of primatives.  Being able to 
portable and explicitly define its size in bits (so that arrays and structs 
obey) would be nice, too.