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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: VMS to Unix (was: Is there a Fortran to Ada translator)
Date: 1997/02/17
Message-ID: <dewar.856189197@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 219391015
References: <9702121335.AA05019@most> <5e77gh$qp4$1@salyko.cube.net>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-02-17T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Oliver asks

<<Talking of Fortran, how come the types Fortran_Integer, Real, Complex
etc. in package Interfaces.Fortran are derived types not subtypes?

It seems to me this unnecessarily complicates integration of Fortran and
Ada code.>>


This would introduce nasty implementation dependencies, since of course
in different implementations the base types would differ, so on one
implementation you might be able to assign Fortran_Integer to Integer
without a conversion and on another you would not be able to.

The extra complication introduced by the derived types is precisely
what is needed to ensure proper portability, which is the whole idea
of this interface package.