Re: Spawning a subprocess and communicating with it.

["Condic, Marin D." <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

dennison@TELEPATH.COM writes:
>To my mind that whole annex misses the mark. It doesn't actually require
>different implementations to interoperate. Thus even if every compiler
>suppored it, it would be useless unless you are developing a system using a
>single compiler and architecture.

This would certainly be interesting, but I think it would have required some
sort of standard outside the bounds of the language. The problem would be
that you'd have to specify in painful detail exactly how all the data would
be represented and how the connections were to be made. We typically have a
similar problem in that we build an embedded machine which will communicate
with the outside world via MilStd1553 or UART links and, given the life of a
system possibly running out 30 years or more, you have no clue what will be
on the other end of the wire. Hence, you have to have an ICD that lays out
exact representation of all messages and once done, you're stuck with them
forever.

I would think that if Ada wanted to guarantee interoperability between Ada
implementations (and possibly other languages as well) the standard would
have to have become machine or OS specific. (Thou shalt use such-and-such OS
call in Unix to implement feature XYZ lest ye should fail to communicate
with thine neighbor. :-)

MDC

Marin D. Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney
Government Engines & Space Propulsion
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
Ph: 561.796.8997         Fx: 561.796.4669

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