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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Interfaces.Shift_Left
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:08:23 +0100
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Date: 2011-12-20T11:08:23+01:00
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On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:38:53 -0600, Randy Brukardt wrote:

[It is imperative vs. declarative debate]

> Obviously, your mileage varies from mine. I presume you're not documenting 
> "the specification" in the code, because otherwise you would have to write 
> it twice (which would make the record types a lot more attactive).

It must be done anyway, because when it comes to the protocols they are
normally defined not in bits and offsets, but in some quite ugly
quasi-language.

Extraction of bits in an imperative manner as Niklas does, I do, and I bet
many people dealing with protocols do, serves documentation purpose better,
than translation from one cryptic declarative language to another (of Ada
representation clauses).

And fields is just a minor problem. The protocols have lots of other
encoding stuff, which simply cannot be expressed by any clause. E.g. chain
codes, padding, check sums etc.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de