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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada -vs- GNAT
Date: 25 May 2002 05:21:50 +0100
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Date: 2002-05-25T05:21:50+01:00
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"Steve Doiel" <nospam_steved94@attbi.com> writes:

> I've been using Ada for a several years now.  In my opinion one of the
> greatest strengths of the language is in its portability.  I find it
> reassuring that different vendors distribute the same reference manual for
> the language.

With a tailored version of Annex M.

> Recently I did some work with XML/Ada and found a few pieces code dependent
> on the GNAT specific attributes 'img and 'unrestricted_access.  I was able
> to make the code work with ObjectAda (and any other Ada compiler) by making
> a few small changes to the sources.

Which seems a reasonable idea. I (hope I) have removed all "'Img"s
from the Booch Components, which are meant to be, and to a large
extent are, compiler-independent. On the other hand, given that GNAT
is my preferred compiler (for all sorts of reasons), I felt quite
happy to use 'Object_Size when appropriate.

> Personally I find the introduction of attributes and pragmas that are not
> essential to be undesirable.
> 
> In a recent thread on the gcc mailing list, Robert Dewar describes how ACT
> introduced the pragma "Unreferened" such that code that previously appeared
> as:
> 
>   pragma Warnings (Off, entitiy)
> 
> could be replaced by
> 
>   pragma Unreferenced (entity)
> 
> because the latter is "neater, reads better, and is clearer why it is
> there."

Of course pragma Warnings is implementation-defined too.