Re: Ada and Internet stuff

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:UXPj7.34990$sa.18017430@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...
> > communications equipment that is oriented towards 8-bit bytes. I doubt
that
> > there are many actual, validated implementations of Ada95 that *don't*
use 8
> > Bits for a stream element.
>   But Randy Brukardt mentioned the other day an Ada 95 compiler on a
> Univac machine with, IIRC, 36 bit words and 9 bit Stream_Element'size
>

A single counter example does not a negation of the premise make. :-) I
*did* say "many actual, validated..." specifically because I'm sure there
are a few machines with odd sized words that might have an Ada
implementation. (I once got into an argument at a roulette table over what I
considered to be an "odd" number :-) The 1750a would be a prime candidate to
have Stream_Element be other than 8-bits and there are a few Ada
implentations for that machine. (Don't know if any are Ada95 though.) A
1750a with a Mil-Std-1553 communications bus would be quite happy having
Stream_Element be 16 bits.


> > and not worrying about absolute portability. Most apps are not ported to
> > begin with and the minority that are, typically are going to be ported
to
> > similar machines.
>   I would normally agree, but here we are talking about Base64 encoding
> for sending data over the internet, and I could certainly imagine wanting
> to have my Univac machine able to talk with 8-bit byte machines.
>   We are of course talking about mathematician's solutions here, not
> engineer's solutions, so reasonableness is not relevant.  ;)

They once lined up the math majors and the engineering majors at one end of
the football field. They put the cheerleaders at the other end and told the
math/engineering students they could cross half the distance, then stop,
then cross half the remaining distance, then stop, etc. and when they got to
the other end, they could make mad, passionate love to the cheerleaders. The
math students went home because they knew they couldn't get there. The
engineering students hung around because they figured they could get close
enough to get the job done. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/