From: Duncan Sands <baldrick@free.fr>
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>
Subject: Dimensions and fixed point types
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:11:39 +0200
Date: 2004-06-09T09:11:39+02:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <mailman.77.1086765132.391.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org> (raw)
Fixed point types have a remarkable property:
you can multiply any two of them to get a third.
You can multiply apples and oranges and get
bananas. This goes against type safety.
Suppose I have several fixed point types, for
example
type Price is delta 0.01 digits ...;
type Volume is delta 1.0 digits ...;
type Value is delta 0.01 digits ...;
Then all possible multiplications are legal. By
declaring some multiplications abstract, I can
remove unwanted operations, and just keep the
ones I want, for example Price * Volume = Value.
(This is already a lot of operations to remove!).
However if somewhere else I define
type Oranges is delta ... digits ...;
then I automagically get a whole bunch of new
operations (Orange * Value = Price etc) that I
don't want. To be safe I'd need to remove them
all too - it is never ending. This makes fixed point
types almost useless in a dimensions system, or
whenever you want to catch incorrect operations
based on type.
Maybe there is a trick I am missing though. Can
anyone see a way to use fixed point types safely
in a setting where multiplying objects of the wrong
type would be fatal?
Also, why were things done this way? It seems to
me that a much better approach would be to say
that multiplication between different fixed point types
is NOT automatically defined, but can be obtained
by writing something like this:
function "*" (Left : Apples; Right : Oranges) return Banana;
pragma Import (Intrinsic, "*");
Thanks for any comments,
Duncan.
next reply other threads:[~2004-06-09 7:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-06-09 7:11 Duncan Sands [this message]
2004-06-09 7:47 ` Dimensions and fixed point types Martin Dowie
2004-06-09 17:04 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-06-11 7:16 ` Duncan Sands
2004-06-11 7:12 ` Duncan Sands
2004-06-11 7:26 ` Hyman Rosen
2004-06-11 7:46 ` Duncan Sands
2004-06-11 17:47 ` Hyman Rosen
2004-06-11 19:10 ` Duncan Sands
2004-06-12 3:40 ` Robert I. Eachus
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