Re: Ada 83 - avoiding unchecked conversions.

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

Mary asks

"we have two 16 bit integers which we need to assemble into a single 32
bit integer (one is high order, the other low order).  We wish to avoid
unchecked conversion if we can.  Is there a standard accepted way of
doing this?
"


I always wonder when people say "I want to do X without using the obvious
method for doing X". Can you explain why you don't want to use unchecked
conversion here. Is there a real technical reason, or simply some kind
of arbitrary rule in action?

Of course you can do this assembly using multiplication (X * 2**16 + y).
which is more appropriate depends on EXACTLY the abstract semantics of
what you are doing (I mean which of unchecked conversion or multiplication)