Re: 'Digit in generic package

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

iRobert Eachs says

"   then Precision can be static in the instance even though it is not
static in the generic template.  This is exactly the behavior
commented on above.  And if an instance is such that some code can be
statically eliminated, most compilers will do so.  (There is at least
one compiler on the market which uses a generic model which prevents
this, but that is an accepted trade-off.  By not doing any generic
instantiations at compile time, the resulting code size is smaller.)
"

Whether a compiler can or cannot perform optimziations based on compile
time known constant values has nothing whatsoever to do with whether
these values are static. The set of static expressions changed in Ada 95,
the set of expressions whose value can be determined at compile time
did not change (except from the addition of new facilities), so I
find the discussion of staticness in instances to be completely 
irrelevant to this discussion.