From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,9d03247c8459fa7b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!atl-c05.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!news-out.ntli.net!newsrout1-gui.ntli.net!ntli.net!newspeer1-win.ntli.net!newsfe5-win.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "Dr. Adrian Wrigley" Subject: Re: Newbie Q User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2 (This is not a psychotic episode. It's a cleansing moment of clarity.) Message-Id: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:52:38 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.4.127.115 X-Complaints-To: http://www.ntlworld.com/netreport X-Trace: newsfe5-win.ntli.net 1127217158 80.4.127.115 (Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:52:38 BST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:52:38 BST Organization: ntl Cablemodem News Service Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4949 Date: 2005-09-20T11:52:38+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 04:09:26 +0000, Jim Rogers wrote: > The example does not indicate whether Degrees is a fixed point or > floating point type. This example would work better with a fixed > point type than with a floating point type because one can always > know what the minimum delta between two fixed point numbers is. The minimum step is known as the *small* of the type (RM 3.5.9:8). The *maximum* smallest step is given by the "delta" of the type, but implementations are free to choose smaller steps unless an attribute is applied specifying the "small". I'm sure you know this, but I had only realized this a few weeks ago when talking about wanting to address arrays by fixed point types. I had got the impression that all fixed point values were integer multiples of the delta, whereas in fact there may be additional bits of precision used by the type. This seemed counter-intuitive. (what is the rationale for delta /= small?) -- Adrian