Re: Linking an ADA routine to a program written in C

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

Larry said

  The little bit of C I do know does not seem to support that
  portability argument.  VMS C programmers call to Pascal routines
  without specifying that the language being called is Pascal.

This is in response to my "argument"

  This shows that you do not have muych experience in the use of Ada 95 in
  constructing such interfaces, since what you say is simply wrong for
  Ada 95, you can interface GNAT to a wide range of languages by following
  whatever C would do without having the slightest idea of what the
  underlying machine calling sequence is.

This was not intended at all as a "portability argument", but rather was
a response to Larry saying:

  As far as _non-portable_ interfaces to other languages, I can do that
  with an Ada 83 program, since I can generally figure out how to program
  in assembly language, and in my experience understanding the underlying
  machine calling sequences is essential for figuring such things out even
  if the linkage is to be constructed in a compiled language.

My point was that in the realm of non-portable interfaces to other languages,
e.g. how do I interface to smalltalk? you do not need to rummage about at
the assembly language level!