Re: Encapsulating Ada.Direct_IO

[Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>]

Randy Brukardt expounded in news:ic1uop$nhs$1@munin.nbi.dk:

> "Peter C. Chapin" <pcc482719@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:tM6dnaTzn6shVH7RRVn_vwA@giganews.com...
> ...
>> Something I wonder about (I don't have the answer) is if
>> it necessary to use a representation clause to force the
>> size of the objects being read to be 8 bits. I'm a little
>> unclear if the standard requires Character to be stored in
>> a file in 8 bit units. That is, the language might treat 
>> the type Character rather more abstractly than you want.
>> Again I'm not sure of this and I'd love to get some
>> insights from others myself. 
> 
> Surely not. Not all machines have 8-bits as any sort of
> native type. For instance, the Unisys U2200 (a 36-bit
> machine, with 9-bit bytes) used Character'Size = 9. (It was
> great fun for the cross-compiler.) 
> 
>                                       Randy.

Heh heh, the Honeywell Level 66 and DPS-8 machines were like 
that too. That extra bit in a byte sometimes came in handy. 
But that made porting to "normal platforms" tricky.

Warren