Re: Prevalence of Compilers for Which Integer'Size < 32?

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Ken said

"Considering I had to start with "anInt32", I didn't really worry about
the clarity of the named number name! Of course, Word_Length_In_Bits is
also horrible if (a) you're declaring multiple types with
different widths in the same package and/or (b) the software might
be used somewhere where the machine word wasn't 32 bits."


You missed my point, case (b) is *exactly* the case where the name
Word_Length_In_Bits might be appropriate if that is what you really
want. Of course if you use the software somewhere where the machine
word is not 32-bits, then you would have to modify this declaration.

Ada code can be made to be automatically portable most of the time, but
not necessarily all the time, since the predefined set of attributes is
not necessarily powerful enough to parametrize everything you want.
In this particular case, if you really wanted the machine word size
to govern the length of the type, you could probably use
System.Word_Size (or in GNAT Standard'Word_Size) and completely avoid
the dreaded 32, in the declaration as *well* as in the name.