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=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,8143b93889fe9472 X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Received: by 10.68.217.69 with SMTP id ow5mr1656065pbc.0.1359689352313; Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:29:12 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: s9ni28850pbb.0!nntp.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed.news.ucla.edu!news.snarked.org!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!nuzba.szn.dk!news.jacob-sparre.dk!munin.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada standard and maximum line lengths Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 20:09:56 -0600 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <8dfcf819-e1d0-4578-a795-a4bf724b5014@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1359425399 23480 69.95.181.76 (29 Jan 2013 02:09:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:09:59 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Date: 2013-01-28T20:09:56-06:00 List-Id: "Robert A Duff" wrote in message news:wccwquxo1se.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com... > Lucretia writes: > >> I was reading the Ada 2012 standard and found this, I was just >> wondering why there is a maximum line length, ... > > I don't think the RM should have that, and I think compilers > ought to support arbitrary line lengths and identifier lengths, > up to whatever limits are imposed by the hardware and operating > system, or at least high enough that nobody will run into them > (including in automatically-generated code). FYI, Janus/Ada stores (all) identifiers in a single array of bytes with each one preceeded by the length in bytes (stored as a byte), so there is a natural limit of 250ish characters for such an implementation. I'd be pretty annoyed to have to change the scanner/parser/etc. to eliminate that limit (it's not like there is a flood of complaints about it), especially as it would slow down scanning (tokenizing) by a fairly significant amount. So there is a bit of value to allowing a limit. Probably a new compiler design could and perhaps should avoid it, but there are a lot of existing Ada compilers out there and it would be silly to force them to change this way (there are zillions of things more important to change in Janus/Ada). Randy.