Re: Ada standard and maximum line lengths

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

Lucretia <laguest9000@googlemail.com> writes:

> On Friday, 1 February 2013 23:13:48 UTC, Randy Brukardt  wrote:
>
>> In any case, there is a disincentive to make any changes so long as the 
>> ACATS insists on having a line length and identifier length being the same 
>
> I thought someone (Bob Duff?) stated that:
>
> 1) some ACATS tests are wrong and people don't tell them they are
> 2) that there is no length that must be specified as a maximum (i.e. 200)
> 3) that an implementation can have unlimited values for these lengths

Yes, I said something like that (although 2 and 3 above seem
synonymous, so I'm not 100% sure what you mean).

>> and thus relatively short. And it would be hard to justify rewriting those 
>> ACATS tests (they're among the least important tests, but not so much that 
>
> But surely it's better to have tests that are correct?

I suppose so, but it's up to some implementer to dispute the tests.
In this case, the wrong test is pretty harmless.  It's not requiring
implementations to do something wrong.  It's requiring them to
do something they are allowed to do anyway.

I believe somebody has volunteered to fix the tests in question.
That's good, but it will have zero effect on any implementation.
That's because the "fix" is to weaken the tests to match the RM;
an implementation that passes the tests now will still pass the
weaker version, and will have no incentive to change.  It will
also have zero effect on any programmer -- programmers will
continue to obey whatever line/lexeme-length limitations
their compiler(s) require.  And if they want to be portable,
they will continue to avoid writing lines longer than 200
characters.

- Bob