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From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Ada95 to ANSI_C converter
Date: 1997/04/08
Message-ID: <E8C25r.8H8@world.std.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 231601352
References: <dewar.859432540@merv> <dewar.860184524@merv>
 <334929E8.4E68@gdls.com> <dewar.860442122@merv>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-08T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <dewar.860442122@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>tests. The ARG found it useful to have a category "pathological", which

This category was invented in 1990.  Only three Ada 83 AI's were
classified as pathological.  Many compiler writers, IMHO, are too quick
to call something pathological.  To me, pathological should mean this is
a combination of features that nobody in their right mind would use --
it has no conceivable use.  It shouldn't mean just any rare combination
of features.

One of those three AI's declared a certain feature to be erroneous,
which seems odd -- "!class pathological" on an AI means "Don't create an
ACVC test", but you can't really create an ACVC test for something
that's erroneous anyway, since any behavior whatsoever is acceptable to
pass the test.  (This was the one about tasks escaping their master,
which is prevented by accessibility checks in Ada95.)

There are no Ada 95 AI's that have been declared pathological.  There's
probably no need -- the "!class pathology" was really for protecting
compiler vendors (and hence their customers) from bizzarre tests, but
the style of the Ada 95 ACVC discourages such tests from being written.

- Bob