Re: 64-bit integers in Ada

[Keith Thompson <kst@cts.com>]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
> news:<3D46DC69.7C291297@adaworks.com>...
> > Robert,
> > 
> > We still have quite a few embedded platforms for which 64 bit
> > integers are not supported. 
> 
> There is no reason for hardware support here, even the ia32
> does not have hardware support, but 64-bit integers are
> very useful and must be supported, just as floating-point
> MUST be supported even on processors with no floating-point.

For certain values of "must".  I'm fairly sure that the Ada standard
does not require support for 64-bit integers, and I've worked with Ada
implementations that didn't support anything bigger than 32 bits
(System.Max_Int = 2**31-1).

If you want to argue that such an implementation is broken (even
though it's conforming), I won't disagree.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center           <*>  <http://www.sdsc.edu/~kst>
Schroedinger does Shakespeare: "To be *and* not to be"