Re: ISO/IEC 14519 - Ada POSIX binding

[tmoran@acm.org]

>But there _are_ problems WRT Ada. The first that comes to mind is
>the whole error handling approach. POSIX likes the idea of an errno
>value with errno codes. The Ada approach often uses exceptions, and
  I have the paper version of IEEE 1003.5-1992 which specifically has a
discussion of why that Ada binding to POSIX uses exception handling
instead of errno.  ISO/IEC 14519 appears to be a successor, covering more
ground (eg sockets).  The Ada binding is thick in the sense of using
exceptions, strong typing, generics, tasking, etc, but it's still pretty
"close to the hardware".  It also was designed pre-Ada95.  In designing
CLAW, we studied the 1003.5-1992 book, but in many cases went for a higher
abstraction level.  For instance, claw sockets need merely Open, Write,
Close (Close is optional, actually, thanks to Finalization) with lots of
stuff, like the multiple states a socket can be in, happening "under the
hood".  There are projects that need the detailed level of control, and
there are projects that will be implemented faster with the simplified
interface.  I don't think a one-size-fits-all standard socket binding
would be adequate.