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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.pl1
Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:46:59 +0100
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Date: 2006-07-11T21:46:59+01:00
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"James Giles" <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net> writes:

> Nor is initialization a very good solution.  Well, unless
> you have a value you can initialize with that's obviously
> wrong (that's why IEEE has NANs).  Initializing with
> an arbitrary plausible value often conceals errors and
> leads to plausible wrong answers.

The Ada compiler we probably have in mind (GNAT) can:

* set otherwise-uninitialised variables to an out-of-range value,
  where possible (eg, for a Boolean, set it to 255, since only 0 and 1
  are legal values)

* check validity even where the rules of the language would normally
  mean you don't need to, eg if a procedure takes a Boolean parameter,
  no need to check, because it has to be correct, right?!