Re: Ada extension information

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

"Martin" <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com> wrote in message 
news:0d9fe71d-788c-46b0-8c5b-18bd229d7246@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
...
>> Is it not jumping the gun a little to use these extensions to document
>> standard libraries before they become official, or even documented?
>
>Probably not, as there is nothing I know of requires the standard
>libraries to be written in Ada, let alone 'vanilla' Ada.
>
>Even if it was in the public part of the specification I guess it
>would still be ok if used for something 'implementation-defined'.

That is correct. There is no requirement that Ada standard packages be 
implemented in Ada (although generally the standard tries to make that 
possible). I think it is unusual if all of the standard packages *are* 
implemented in Ada.

For instance, Janus/Ada has a couple of units implemented in assembler, and 
there are also a number of standard packages that are 'built-in'; that is 
there is no implementation at all (the compiler just generates the needed 
code).

Obviously, portability is enhanced if units don't depend on 
compiler-specific features, but that hardly matters for the language-defined 
units. No one is going to try to compile the Janus/Ada Ada.Text_IO package 
with GNAT (or vice versa) -- both compilers have their own!

                             Randy.