Re: Bug in Ada (SuSe 10.2) ?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Adam Beneschan" <adam@irvine.com> wrote in message
news:48277611-402f-4622-be05-6edddf6dd56a@o10g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> On Feb 20, 10:31 am, "Jeffrey R. Carter"
> <spam.jrcarter....@acm.nospam.org> wrote:
> > I never accepted that it was a valid reason for the defaults not to
> > be Ada. The simple explanation is that GNAT, by default, is not an Ada
> > compiler.
> > You need at a minimum -gnato and -fstack-check for it to be so.
>
> Well, if you're going to be pedantic, then even with those flags GNAT
> is not an Ada compiler, because I can give it Ada programs that it
> doesn't compile (not to mention non-Ada programs that it doesn't
> reject, and Ada programs that run incorrectly after GNAT compiles
> them).  And the same is doubtless true of any other compiler.  GNAT
> will not be an Ada compiler until they finally get the Last Bug out,
> which isn't going to happen because by the time they finally get Ada
> 2005 to be working 100% correctly, the Ada language will be up to Ada
> 2067 or so.
>
> So maybe it's ridiculously pedantic to claim it's not Ada for that
> reason---but probably no moreso than for your reason.

Well, maybe you are write pedantically, but I would counterclaim that there
is a big difference between a compiler that fails to compile Ada by an
oversight (that is a bug) and one that does so intentionally.

In any case, I agree with Jeff that this is a bad thing. Overflow checking
is a feature of Ada that sets it apart from other languages, and it is bad
for it not to be supported by default. It would be like a compiler skipping
range checking or variant discriminant checking by default "because they're
too expensive". The Ada language even provides a way to turn those things
off if they are too expensive -- that surely suggests that the default
should be that these checks are present.

The other obvious evidence that this is a bad thing is that OP's question:
which we see here several times a year. It would obviously be better if we
didn't have to deal with that (and remember that many people will not
actually write such a question, so there probably are many more that are
confused).

Of course, this is just griping about a particular implementation. It is
always important to remember that Ada /= GNAT.

                                             Randy.