Re: Decimal Floating point was RE: Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics - language lawyer question

[Keith Thompson <kst@cts.com>]

"Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com> writes:
> I only suggested To_Static as a possible implementation.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, it isn't.  It's not
feasible, it's not well-defined, and it's not likely to give you what
you want.  I'm afraid the suggestion has only served to muddy the
waters.

> All I want to do is to create or be able to use a decimal type at
> run-time based on either automatic or the simple-minded sum the
> exponents for multiplication and subtract the exponents for division
> algorithm. As I have previously stated, I would be quite happy with
> a decimal floating type.

Ok, there's some dispute over whether that would actually be useful,
or whether the existing decimal fixed-point facilities would meet your
needs, but presumably you know your application domain best.

There are probably multiple software implementations of decimal
floating-point.  Do a Google search and grab one of them.  If it's
implemented in a language other than Ada, write a binding.  Use it in
your application.  You'll lose a small amount of syntactic sugar
relative to having it as a language feature, but syntactic sugar is
often overrated.  You won't lose any significant efficiency; since
most hardware doesn't support decimal floating-point, a compiler would
have to use library calls anyway.

If it works out for you, if it lets you do useful things you couldn't
have done without it, let us know; we may be able to help you refine
your solution.

-- 
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"