RE: Information Systems Annex

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

From: Bob Leif
To: Robert Dewar

I agree about COBOL providing strength; however, XML is and will be used
for reporting and achieving purposes. It is one of the few subjects that
Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and Adobe agree on. The XML Pattern element and its
attributes could be considered a generalized 21st century picture
clause.

As for decimals, how do I do the following in Ada?
2*10**-x * 3*10**y = 6*10**(y-x)      y and x being non-negative
integers.

If I have 10 or more decimal numbers with different exponents, I do not
know how to assign the optimum exponent at run-time. It would be
perfectly acceptable to have created a package of decimal types for the
entire range. However, the elegant way would be to instantiate a generic
at run-time, which is what one can presently do to size an array. The
y-x formula for the value of the exponent is the one I was taught in
high school for my slide-rule. 


-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org] On Behalf Of Robert Dewar
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 1:18 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics
- language lawyer question

"Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message
news:<mailman.1029204063.16221.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> One problem with the
> Information Systems Annex is that it was to some extent 
> based on COBOL,
> particularly, the picture clause.

To me that is a strength. After all, most financial software is still
written in COBOL, and the picture
clause in particular is one of the successful features
of that language. I think the reason for the lack of
use of Ada in the IS field has nothing whatever to do
with technical features in fact.

> I also believe that a way around the static requirement 
> for Ada decimals should be created.

I have no idea what this means

> I still would like to use the slide-rule formula to
> calculate the exponent. Would a pragma To_Static be 
> possible?

I have no guess as to what this might mean