Re: Endianness independance

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Well, yes, of course. Ada has excellent facilities for dealing with
representation and I did mention something about this elsewhere. My point is
that if System X programmed with Compiler X, Version X to target hardware X
thinks it is supposed to be sending a 16 bit integer to System Y programmed
with Compiler Y, Version Y to target hardware Y and Y thinks its supposed to
be receiving a 32 bit integer, you'll have a problem. Compiler X can't check
Source Code Y to make sure it got it right. The language could forbid the
very existence of 32 bit integers and solve the problem - except that Y
would then get programmed in something else. The only way to deal with the
issue is with some kind of verification external to the language. The
language definition can't fix this - except possibly by eliminating possible
representations and that only makes it useless in some contexts.

MDC
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Marin David Condic
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Stephen Leake <Stephen.A.Leake@nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:uu1ekigg5.fsf@nasa.gov...
>
> The point is that Ada provides a _standard_, _single_ representation
> clause that works for both kinds of hardware:
>