Description: INFO-ADA Digest V88 #166 From: MRGATE!INFO Date: 9-JUL-1988 From: CSBVAX::MRGATE!INFO-ADA-REQUEST@SIMTEL20.ARPA@SMTP Date: Sat, 9 Jul 88 01:30:40 MDT From: INFO-ADA-REQUEST@AJPO.SEI.CMU.EDU Reply-To: INFO-ADA-REQUEST@AJPO.SEI.CMU.EDU Subject: INFO-ADA Digest V88 #166 To: INFO-ADA@AJPO.SEI.CMU.EDU INFO-ADA Digest Sat, 9 Jul 88 Volume 88 : Issue 166 Today's Topics: Ada and Decimal Arithmetic Ada compiler for the AMD 29000? alex/ayacc -- UCI Arcadia release Is This Correct Ada or VMS Ada Compiler? Need some leads for Ada training classes. WANTED : DEAD OR ALIVE - "C" to ADA Translator ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 Jul 88 19:12:01 GMT From: mcvax!enea!sommar@uunet.uu.net (Erland Sommarskog) Subject: Ada and Decimal Arithmetic Marc.Graham@SEI.CMU.EDU writes: >I was fascinated to note that in neither Ed Berard's post on Ada and >commercial usage, nor in any of its responses, was the issue of Ada >and decimal arithmetic mentioned. I would have thought that Ada's lack >of support for decimal arithmetic is a major impediment to the use of >Ada in commercial applications. Indeed, if I were asked to render a >professional judgement on Ada to a commercial client, lack of decimal >support would in itself be enough to reject it. While it is true that Ada does not contain itself decimal arithmetic accurate to the last bit, it is easy to implement. Basically: Package Decimal_arithmetic is Type Fixed_point(No_of_dec : Natural) is private; -- Possibly limited -- Operations on Fixed_point, arithmetics and I/O. Private Type Fixed_point(No_of_dec : Natural) is -- for instance Record Int_part : integer; Fractional : integer; End record; End package; What you miss is that you can't have fixed point literals. 1.02 may not reliable. But this easy solved with a Set_fixed_point operation that takes two integer parameters. Someone pointed out that to count your money, you may as well count in cents. This is perfectly true. However, the problem arises when you have things like interest rates. I'm working with a commercial application for the moment. We use VAX-Pascal, so we don't have the same possibilities for abstract data types as in Ada. And when you are dealing with a percent figure, you must know whether it's 0, 2 or 4 decimals for this one. If two people interpret it differently, an error will be introduced. Being in the line of scaled integers: If one believe that this is a problem which occurs only in commercial applications, one is wrong. My project before this one was a graphical package to be used in radar systems. We used scaled integers. Due to real-time requirements we had no time for floating point calcualations. -- Erland Sommarskog ENEA Data, Stockholm sommar@enea.UUCP "It all looks quite impressive really, but is it really necessary?" Radio Stars ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jul 88 13:11:17 edt From: karl@grebyn.com (Karl A. Nyberg) Subject: Ada compiler for the AMD 29000? [Ed - forwarded.] To those in the know: I am interested to find out whether there is anyone out there doing development work on an Ada compiler for the AMD 29000 chip, possibly doing something with VME cards. If you are a developer, or know who might be doing development work in this area, please let me know. Fred Yu IIT Research Institute Ada Information Clearinghouse 4600 Forbes Blvd., 2nd Floor Lanham, MD 20706 (703) 685-1477 (301) 731-8894 fredyu@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Jul 88 14:57:27 -0700 From: Kari Forester Subject: alex/ayacc -- UCI Arcadia release The Arcadia Project at University of California, Irvine announces the release of two software tools, alex and ayacc. Future releases of these and many other tools/packages are forthcoming. --------------------------- The UCI Arcadia Software Distribution Package 1.0 contains the following. alex: a lexical analyzer generating tool written in Ada and generating Ada code. Alex is modeled after the popular Unix tool, lex. ayacc : a parser generating tool written in Ada and generating Ada code. Ayacc is modeled after the popular Unix tool, yacc. Both tools run under Berkley Unix 4.2 or VAX VMS operating systems. Requests should be directed to UCI Computing Facility. (see below) For information about the tools themselves, please send email to alex-info@ics.uci.edu ayacc-info@ics.uci.edu or write to Arcadia Project Department of Information and Computer Science University of California Irvine, CA 92717 In addition, this package includes Arcturus, an Ada interpreter system developed at UCI under the Programming Environment Project headed by Professor Thomas Standish. The Arcturus software is included with this release because a substantial amount of interest in the ideas it pioneered still exists. This software is no longer supported, and is included here with that understanding. Two versions of the system are provided. Arcturus 1.7: includes a PDL/Rapid Prototyping subsystem. runs on VAX machines. Arcturus 3.4: runs on both VAXes and SUNs. includes most of Ada tasking, but not the PDL system. Both versions run under Berkley Unix 4.2. --------------------------- Interested parties will be asked to sign a license agreement, available from the UCI Computing Facility. The release package will include the above mentioned items on a 1/2" magnetic tape (6250bpi/TAR format) as well as user manuals and installation instructions. A fee of $75, payable to UC Regents, will be charged to cover costs and handling. (cartridge tapes and alternate bpi's can be arranged with the Computing Facility but may require an adjusted fee.) If you are interested in obtaining this package, please contact Computing Facility 360 Computer Science Attn: Arcadia Distribution University of California Irvine, CA 92717 (714) 856-5153 or send email to arcadia-software@ics.uci.edu --------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Jul 88 19:26:25 PDT From: telesoft!keith@ucsd.edu (Keith Shillington @prodigal) Subject: Is This Correct Ada or VMS Ada Compiler? The Ada is correct. The instance package q has the interface: package q is subtype tt is integer; type xyz is array(1..10) of integer; end q; Keith Shillington TeleSoft's Education Group ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jul 88 22:20:02 GMT From: amdahl!nsc!rfg@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Ron Guilmette) Subject: Need some leads for Ada training classes. There are some people here who would like to get Ada-literate. Unfortunately, I don't really have either the time or the teaching skills/materials to give them a "proper" intensive Ada short course. Do any of you out there in netland know of any good Ada intensive short training courses which are being offered by anyone in the next few months? The ideal course would be offered in the SF Bay Area or at least in California, would last from one to two weeks, would be oriented towards experienced programmers (fully trained in other languages), and would have some "hands-on" activities. It seems to me that I have seen flyers for just this sort of course in the past but I'll be damned if I can remember who was offering the class. Ron Guilmette National SemiConductor Internet: rfg@nsc.nsc.com Uucp: ...{pyramid,sun,amdahl,apple}!nsc!rfg -- Ron Guilmette National SemiConductor Internet: rfg@nsc.nsc.com Uucp: ...{pyramid,sun,amdahl,apple}!nsc!rfg ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jul 88 18:39:27 GMT From: vrdxhq!daitc!csed-1!zweig@umd5.umd.edu (Jonathan Zweig) Subject: WANTED : DEAD OR ALIVE - "C" to ADA Translator In my experience, it takes a month or so to come up to speed as a so-so Ada programmer if you've got experience programming in other languages. C to Ada translation? I vote hiring somebody to do it by hand at five or six bucks an hour. If the code is too icky to translate by hand with a sufficiently high degree of confidence that you've preserved the functionality, then rewrite the program(s). -Johnny Zweig Institute for Defense Analyses/ Computer and Software Engineering Division. ------------------------------ End of INFO-ADA Digest ******************************