Re: Ada News Brief

[kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson)]

In <533utt$43p@ns1.sw-eng.falls-church.va.us> reuseic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (Reuse News) writes:
[...]
>                                                   ObjectAda   
> for Windows includes the full Ada 95 core language and will   
> compile all Ada 83 code without changes, according to the   
> company.
[...]

I'm not sure where this statement came from, but it's not quite correct.
Ada 95 is very nearly upward compatible with Ada 83, so *most* correct
and portable Ada 83 code is valid Ada 95 code with the same semantics.
In one study I've read about, an program consisting of several tens of
thousands of lines of Ada 83 code, which had not been written with Ada 95
in mind, required no changes whatsoever.  Porting a program from Ada 83
to Ada 95 is typically no more difficult than porting from one compiler
to another.

The ObjectAda compiler does provide a command-line option to aid in
finding incompatibilities.  It's called "-83" in the Unix version (I
don't do Windows).  It does not turn ObjectAda into an Ada 83 compiler;
instead, it prints specific error messages for incompatible constructs
such as attempting to use "aliased" as an identifier.

The statement on our Web site (see
<http://www.thomsoft.com/products/ada/oa/oa2.html>) is:

    In addition, virtually all Ada 83 code will compile unchanged with
    ObjectAda.

As always, I speak only for myself.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@thomsoft.com <*>
TeleSoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Alsys^H^H^H^H^H Thomson Software Products
10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway, Suite 300, San Diego, CA, USA, 92121-2706
FIJAGDWOL