Re: OS Bindings (was: Where is the elusive jump command?)

[gisle@apal.ii.uib.no (Gisle S�lensminde)]

In article <8d3s9o$6621@ftp.kvaerner.com>, Tarjei T. Jensen wrote:
>
>Robert Dewar wrote
>>That may be OK, multiple precision integers can be useful,
>>so long as you do not go berserk and require that I be
>>able to use them for case indexes, subscripts, entryu
>>family indexes, loop variables, etc.
>
>
>Agree. I think Ada could do well in encryption applications if there were
>general support for this. E.g. arithmetic, and, or, xor,  conversion to
>integer, simple math functions. Most other uses could be done by converting to
>integer.

Ada is in fact quite good for implementing at least symetric crypto
algorithms. For these algorithms the important is the availability
of operation like bitwise and, or, xor, not, shift and rotate, which
these algorithms use. Ada have all these operations, which is more 
than even C has. (C miss rotate, but it is often implemened through
a idiom). The only problem is that you can't use userdefined types,
but must use unsigned_X from interfaces if you want to use shift
or rotate. 

For public key cryptography, Ada miss multiprecision numbers,
but so do C/C++ which is the commonly used language in the area.

--
Gisle S�lensminde ( gisle@ii.uib.no )   

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