Re: Typing in Ada

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Nick Roberts wrote:
 > That is to say that in most Ada
> programs it is typical to have constructions such as:
>    type Apples is range 0..100;
>    type Oranges is range 0..200;

Is it really? The very fact that you have named these types as
you did suggests that the appplicability of ranged types is quite
limited. In a real program that does something useful, what kinds
of things do you want to count up to 100 but not to 101? To 200
but not to 201? Can you give examples from some of your real code?

> In either case, in Ada, the easy mistake:
>    A := O;
> will be caught by the compiler, whereas in either of the C constructions:
>    a = o;
> will not.

I think it's more likely that a type with a limited number of
values would be represented as an enumeration, in which case
the errant construct would be caught by C as well.