Re: How to modify Standard types in GNAT-3.11?

[Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com writes:

> In article <uiuczpcyy.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov>,
>   Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
> > tonya@aban.ece.ubc.ca (Tony R. Ambardar) writes:
> >
> > Since you are recompiling the run-time, you can certainly
> > edit any file you want. However, it would be better to
> > simply delete Long_long_Float, since you won't support
> > it. Don't lie and make it not
> > bigger than Long_Float!
> 
> Bad idea! Stephen, I guess you are not that familiar with
> the GNAT run-time library. Long_Long_Float is used in many
> many units, and indeed the expected thing is that it be
> equivalent to Long_Float if IEEE extended is not supported.
> Even doing this equivalence is not so easy!

Well, I admit to being not familiar with the GNAT run-time library. I
was arguing from the general principle "don't declare garbage (at
least where everyone can see it)". However, on reading LRM 3.5.7 (16),
I see that GNAT's expected usage follows the LRM (precision of
Long_Float should be no greater than Long_Long_Float).

In reality, people should always define their own floating point
types, and not rely on Long_Long_Float having any particular meaning.
It just bugs me that this is one very visible area where Ada 95 turns
out to be so ill-defined.

Wouldn't it be better to define System_Max_Float_Type in a
GNAT-specific package, and use that in the run-time library? 


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