Re: Size of CHARACTER in Ada 83

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

"It seems to me that those who want a 256 value CHARACTER should have to
change their code rather than me change mine, but I have this funny
feeling the case is "moot" (with apologies to Robert Dewar or whoever
that was that was complaining about improper usage of that word).  Is it?"

Well it is certainly not a moot issue, because it has been officially
decided that Character will always be 256 values (by the ISO standards
group producing the Ada 95 standard), and that it may optionally be
256 values in Ada 83 (by the Zandfoort meeting of WG9, affirming
the AI you mention) [moot means arguable, undecided].

I think the compiler writer who changed to 256 characters was doing 
the right thing. Rational in particular has I believe made this change,
and particularly wanted to do so, since the 128 character limitation
was a real problem for them, esp3ecially in Europe, and I think that
Rational certainly made the right decision.

If you really want a 128 value character type, define it yourself

  type My_Char is new Character range Character'Val(0) .. Character'Val(127);

that will work in all versions of Ada.

But shouldn't you really change your program? Any program that restricts
charcters to 128 values these days is obsolescent it seems to me.