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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Beware: Rep spec on an enumeration type causes code explosion
Date: 1997/12/10
Message-ID: <dewar.881730374@merv>#1/1
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References: <gwinn-0512972303070001@dh5055063.res.ray.com>
 <EKrsrr.LD7.0.-s@inmet.camb.inmet.com>
 <gwinn-0812971210080001@dh5055133.res.ray.com>
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-12-10T00:00:00+00:00
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Joe Gwinn wrote:
 ``A number of folk have cited chapter and verse that enumerations
   do start at zero if left alone.  This was not widely known,
   apparently, perhaps because Ada83 didn't govern this.''

Well it is not easy to gauge what is or is not "widely known", or even what
such a phrase means. But I have never seen an Ada 83 compiler which did not
default to Pos value = representation value, and any other choice would be
strange indeed.

Yes, Ada 95 makes this explicit, but this is not a requirement that I would
expect to have any effect on implementations in practice, because no other
choice makes sense.

And certainly all the Ada programmers I have known were aware of this as
the natural and likely default!