Re: Zero_Fill pragma

["Jean-Pierre Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr>]

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"Nick Roberts" <nick.roberts@acm.org> a �crit dans le message de news:opsbgc51fxp4pfvb@bram-2...
> >> Am I too late to make a proposal for a new pragma for
> >> the Ada 2005 Amendment?
>
> > Yes
>
> Well that makes the matter moot anyway, I suppose.
The latest deadline for submissions was dec 31, 2003. The general scope of the amendment has been approved by WG9 in June. Although
the ARG can decide to make new amendment AIs, it is highly unlikely to do it at this point in the game.

> Jean-Pierre, I suspect you did not understand the intended
> meaning of this pragma. Perhaps I described it badly (sorry).
Yes, I completely misunderstood the intent, sorry.

So, now I have mixed feelings about it. Yes, it would make things simpler to write. OTOH, I suspect that very few types would need
that pragma (as you describe, a couple of types very strongly connected to hardware), so writing more fields is not really a
problem. And you are trading explicit description for (easier) implicit behaviour. And a good Unchecked_Conversion can easily reset
all bits to 0 (and YES, I claim Unchecked_Conversion is the precise tool for doing that!).

In short: there is value in what you are proposing, I am not convinced that the value is worth the cost.

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           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
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