Re: CRC in Ada?

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <1997Mar24.130721.1@eisner>,
Larry Kilgallen <kilgallen@eisner.decus.org> wrote:
>Depending on the operating system, it may be possible to write a file
>which makes sense to one non-Ada program but not to another. So if we
>say that Text_IO output should be readable by "some" non-Ada programs
>or "ANSI-standard" non-Ada programs, that still leaves a lot of room
>for "bugs" to use your definition.  It is entirely possible to have
>two tools both of which are "favorites" which don't handle things in
>the same fashion.

Well, sure, but on VMS, I can edit text files using several editors, and
it seems to work, more or less.  Surely, I can expect Ada.Text_IO to
generate files compatible with that mode of operation.  And vice-versa.
I mean, when I edit a file in VMS, I don't give a bunch of
system-dependent mumbo jumbo about what *sort* of text file I want.

>...  Thus one can have a "bug" (as always, seen in the
>eye of the user) which Standard Ada (no platform tricks) could not
>avoid.

I agree that "bug" is in the eye of the beholder.  ;-)  And, sometimes,
it's in the eye of the holder whose *fault* the bug is -- usually, given
two incompatible programs, the second one that one happens to run
across!

- Bob

P.S. I haven't used VMS for several years, but when I did, I used to
edit text files (e.g. source code for a program) sometimes, and despite
the weird file naming conventions, the *contents* of the files were
plain old ascii text.