Re: Naturals and discrete types

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <oGjE7.221593$K6.106487221@news2>, Clueless says...
>Also, I've been checking my Ada docs to find out if the Natural type is
>considered to be a Discrete or Real type by the GNAT compiler, but I
>havent found any specific info yet. Although the compiler messages
>certainly seem to indicate that Natural is a subtype of Real.

Boy are you confused!

Natural is a subtype of Integer with a range of 0 to Integer'last. It is defined
in package Standard (see
http://www.ada-auth.org/~acats/arm-html/RM-A-1.html#I4539 ). Thus you do *not*
need a conversion to use Natural where Integer is usable. However, you *do* need
a conversion ( "Float(My_Natural)" ) to use it where a Float is expected. There
is no type named "Real" (unless you count the one in Interfaces.Fortran), but
there are a class of types called "real", which includes floating-point and
fixed point types. The only predefined floating-point types is "Float" (and
"Long_Float" on some systems), and the only predefined fixed-point type is
"Duration".

This is all pretty basic stuff. If it is confusing you, you probably ought to go
read a good Ada book. If you don't want to shell out cash for one, there's one
online at http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/ . At least read through
chapter 5 there (http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/ch05.htm)

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T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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