Re: Question for the folks who designed Ada95

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>]

Corey Ashford <yeroca@rocketmail.com> writes:

> Thanks, I did find that reference after posting, but I found the
> explanation lame.  They didn't want to introduce a new
> operator syntax and didn't want a function with a name
> part of the language definition.
> How was the max and min functions handled?  With attributes...
> I don't see how this case is really any different.

You're right.  I'm not sure we ever thought about attributes, though it
seems obvious now.

Two other issues:

We didn't think it was necessary -- you can always multiply by 2 or
whatever.  Optimizing that to a shift instruction is trivial, and if you
care about efficiency, surely you should be using an optimizing compiler
that is *at least* that smart.  (After all, I want that optimization for
signed integers, too!)

It's not clear what shifting should mean if the modulus is not a power
of 2.  Robert has stated many times that that should never have been
allowed, and I tend to agree.

- Bob
-- 
Change robert to bob to get my real email address.  Sorry.