Re: Numerical calculations: Why not use fixed point types for everything?

["Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>]

On 2/1/2013 4:53 AM, Ada novice wrote:
> What about using fixed point number representation for loop counters?
> It is common for example we have a time index in a program that
>is increasing with a value say t:= t + 0.01 seconds for each index in a loop

Well, it is common only in sloppy programming.

loop counters should always be discrete. as in integers,
enumeration set, etc...

In Matlab, they do anything and it runs since there is
no error checking, but it will be code full of bugs. I am sure
in Ada the loop counter must belong to a discrete type. One
good thing in Ada about Ada.

For your example, one will find the length, say number of samples,
and use a natural for an index, and inside the loop, then
access the data using this index.

The data itself can be float ofcourse. Much safer than using
the index itself for the time steps update.

--Nasser