Re: Conditional types?

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

Caffeine Junky fed this fish to the penguins on Sunday 10 November 2002 
12:34 pm:

> 
> You're recieving data through a function call or a procedure of some
> sort, but the source for some reason does not indicate explicitly what
> type of data it is. However, since you do have some limited knowledge
> of the system you can safely assume it's passing either a float, an
> integer, or an unsigned 32 bit integer. Is there a way do this in Ada

        I know of NO language that can identify what 32 random bits of data is 
supposed to represent. It could be 4 8-bit characters, 2 16-bit 
characters, or even a memory address.

        0x80 (just to keep the numbers small) could be signed -128, unsigned 
+123 -- without some additional information the bit pattern tells one 
nothing.

        You /might/ be able to identify that /some/ patterns are not /valid/ 
floats, but that is the limit.

--  
 > ============================================================== <
 >   wlfraed@ix.netcom.com  | Wulfraed  Dennis Lee Bieber  KD6MOG <
 >      wulfraed@dm.net     |       Bestiaria Support Staff       <
 > ============================================================== <
 >        Bestiaria Home Page: http://www.beastie.dm.net/         <
 >            Home Page: http://www.dm.net/~wulfraed/             <