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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1901f265c928a511 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: controlnews3.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.moat.net!border1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com!nntp.gbronline.com!news.gbronline.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 23:42:32 -0500 Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 23:43:04 -0500 From: Wes Groleau Reply-To: groleau+news@freeshell.org Organization: Ain't no organization here! User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (Macintosh/20040208) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Typing in Ada References: <2i1t1lFij4g5U1@uni-berlin.de> <9ZRuc.8410$hB2.7017@nwrdny03.gnilink.net> <40BCE5E8.4040305@tidorum.fi> In-Reply-To: <40BCE5E8.4040305@tidorum.fi> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 69.9.86.85 X-Trace: sv3-JQHc/qx93CRq7Tf1zbMCiusUQqNhxOaQHDqDxjCn17xxH7TUlpS2frWRrowmDI0fmd8696O4mOzYrer!gAWZSpGPOnJrOFNqrqZnKTT2SR4iGyKKy1Em5wHZvcQcV7wAQsMEu3yiwKtOvMK9n0Ocq0GK9u1T X-Complaints-To: abuse@gbronline.com X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@gbronline.com X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: controlnews3.google.com comp.lang.ada:1009 Date: 2004-06-01T23:43:04-05:00 List-Id: Niklas Holsti wrote: > To return to Nick Robert's example, the numbers 100 and 200 should > either come from the requirements specification ("The program shall be > able to count up to 100 apples and 200 oranges...") or should appear in > the software user manual ("The program can count up to 100 apples and > 200 oranges"). So then it is clear that the program satisfies its > requirements (or it won't compile) and satisfies its user manual, > whatever range Standard.Integer has on the current platform. In a way, you are correct. But why must we put so much effort into preventing behavior that is not prohibited just because it is not required? Does the specification say ... ? "The program shall not tolerate apple counts higher than 100" Did some domain expert persuade the programmers that 101 apples was not reasonable? In other words, when a specification says "A count of 100 must be supported," the programmers should NOT mentally rewrite it to "Counts larger than 100 must not be supported." -- Wes Groleau Free Genealogical Lookups: http://groleau.freeshell.org/ref/lookups.shtml