Re: floating point problem

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

Larry said

<<Of course I have called from Ada to other languages for other
purposes, but in this case (since I don't recall any test in the
RM) I was hoping some language-lawyer would say that exceptions
would surely be raised by some particular expression and thus I
could intercept the exception.  Naturally raising such exceptions
would not be a viable approach if some implementations never "got
that far".>>

Of course you cannot look in the RM to find out what an Ada compiler should
do when it is run in a configuration which it does not support. You might as
well try loading the Ada compiler into a washing machine and adding 
detergent, and then say -- well I knew it wouldn't run perfectly, but I
thought from the RM that some exception should be raised :-)

When you run GNAT on a machine with no floating-point and no floating-point
emulation, it is not quite as bad as putting it in a washing machine, but from
a formal point of view it is the same.

Who knows what happens? I never tried it, so I don't know, but you certainly
cannot look in the RM to see what happens. Mike must know what happens, since
he complains about his from time to time!