From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4751d44ff54a2c2c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-07-30 13:20:38 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!prodigy.com!uunet!dfw.uu.net!ash.uu.net!world!news From: Robert A Duff Subject: Re: 64-bit integers in Ada Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 20:20:02 GMT References: <3CE3978F.6070704@gmx.spam.egg.sausage.and.spam.net> <3D46DC69.7C291297@adaworks.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:27495 Date: 2002-07-30T20:20:02+00:00 List-Id: Richard Riehle writes: > Robert A Duff wrote: > > > Note that the RM does not require support for 64-bit integers > > (unfortunately, IMHO), and there are compilers that do not support > > 64-bit integers. > > Robert, > > We still have quite a few embedded platforms for which 64 bit > integers are not supported. We would like to be able to use > Ada 95 for them, so a requirement for a language feature that > is not supported would be meaningless. All processors can easily support 64-bit arithmetic, or 640-bit arithmetic. It's not meaningless -- it just means that the implementation has to provide software support. I think I know how to design such a feature in accordance with the "Bauer Principle", which Robert Dewar recently told us the name of. So if you have an 8-bit processor, maybe you don't want 64-bit integers, or maybe you don't want 32- or even 16-bit integers, but I still think the compiler should be required to provide them. And more. >... Also, there has been > some discussion, in the past, about support for eight-bit > microcontrollers such as the I-8051 family. I am sure some > compiler developer would find it very entertaining to design > an Ada compiler with 8051 64 bit integers, but also quite > useless. Why? What is the largest integer that a programmer might want, given that the programmer has chosen an 8-bit processor? Where do you draw the line? To me 8-bit processor implies limited address space, but I don't see why that *necessarily* implies small integers. > Richard Riehle - Bob