Re: 64-bit integers in Ada

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <yeceldkpm34.fsf@king.cts.com>, Keith Thompson <kst@cts.com> writes:
> dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
>> Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
>> news:<3D46DC69.7C291297@adaworks.com>...
>> > Robert,
>> > 
>> > We still have quite a few embedded platforms for which 64 bit
>> > integers are not supported. 
>> 
>> There is no reason for hardware support here, even the ia32
>> does not have hardware support, but 64-bit integers are
>> very useful and must be supported, just as floating-point
>> MUST be supported even on processors with no floating-point.
> 
> For certain values of "must".  I'm fairly sure that the Ada standard
> does not require support for 64-bit integers, and I've worked with Ada
> implementations that didn't support anything bigger than 32 bits
> (System.Max_Int = 2**31-1).
> 
> If you want to argue that such an implementation is broken (even
> though it's conforming), I won't disagree.

Do you mean Ada has not defined its own counterintuitive meaning for
the term "broken" ?    :-)