From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!newspeer1.nac.net!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2015 19:02:54 -0500 From: Dennis Lee Bieber Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How to get this space away? Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2015 20:02:58 -0400 Organization: IISS Elusive Unicorn Message-ID: References: <0b23f4af-9a55-4d1d-be90-f74b316a95cf@googlegroups.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 6.00/32.1186 X-No-Archive: YES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 108.73.119.127 X-Trace: sv3-6y7cFD7eDaN5MncE7ZUb7lteu92dG36p0MTpwDamH04godDqQItYv5KYVsUXc1dc4Ty46r91ID141Z0!IMT89prA39omvwzj389LHuwPDWDIm3ii7PPOZFufbHNe7fdmW4kOPPteM7O2mC4iCAFOt8u8LWJJ!cDu468GgCfGUeOW4OoW5a9vDzvxX X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 2471 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:26202 Date: 2015-06-05T20:02:58-04:00 List-Id: On Fri, 5 Jun 2015 06:02:35 -0700 (PDT), Laurent declaimed the following: >On Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 10:50:07 PM UTC+2, J-P. Rosen wrote: > >> This dates back to Ada83. The initial idea was that a positive number >> and its opposite (negative) number should have the same number of >> characters. Forcing a '+' to all positive number would not have been >> pretty, so the design team chose to put a space for positive numbers >> (negative numbers just have an initial '-'). > >I won't argue about the ARG's wisdom or their choices but for me it still >doesn't make sense. If I want to display a number (positive or negative, int, > float, or whatever) in a string I always want it to be separated by a space. I suspect it is a carryover from pretty much most of the ancestral languages. All the ones I learned on use one position for the sign, and tend to suppress the "+" by using a space character. Granted those were formatted output conversions, not generic "print" conversions. Nor where they modern scripting type languages. -- Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/