HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: eachus@goldfinger.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: First-Time C
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 15:42:30 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.210636.8396@gvl.unisys.com> garyp@rmtc.paramax.com (Gary Palangian [RMTC/ISP]) writes:

>       Our customer is probably going to make a decision to move from
>   Ada to C on my project...

   I find this statement very confusing...  There are some projects,
even very large projects, where progamming everything in Ada is
appropriate.  There are other projects, especially small projects,
where doing everything in C makes sense.  But I cannot imagine a
project where switching from all Ada to all C makes any sort of sense.
The most time and effort in an Ada project is in the design phase, the
most time and effort in a C project is usually spent in integration
and test.  Switching from Ada to C would seem to guarentee the worst
of both worlds.  (It would be nice if design in C, code and test in
Ada was the BEST of both worlds, but I don't think that free lunch
exists.)

>       I would appreciate concise and concrete information for
>  managing large systems development using C, especially from those
>  with an Ada background.

   Don't, use Ada instead!  (So much for concise and concrete. :-)

   If you need to do this for a large system, using Ada as a
compilable design language has a lot of advantages, but you must both
restrict the Ada used and maintain the design during the coding
process.  This works well but can cause personnel problems.  Everyone
ends up knowing both Ada and C if they didn't when the project
started, and from experience unwilling to work on another C project.
(Try spending a couple of years seeing all the advantages of Ada, but
none of the disadvantages, and vice-versa for C.  It's not fair, but
that's the way one project I know of that did this ended up.  This was
back in 1984-86, when no compilers supported the chapter 13 features
needed for a DBMS so it was a "right" decision.)

   The best of all possible worlds for your project, however, may be
to mix Ada and C.  Use Ada for the high-level design and structure,
and whenever appropriate write the (function) bodies in C.  This
allows you to use the strengths of both languages which are in very
different areas.  (You will also find that most of the bugs are in the
C code.  For the most part this will be because the parts where C is
most appropriate are the trickest routines to get right in any
case...)

    Have  fun,
--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...
From: SAHARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada readability, Bryan & Mendal book purpose
Date: 7 Jan 93 18:18:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Internet


David Emery writes:

>The point of Mendal & Bryan (or Bryan & Mendal, depending on volume)
>is to illustrate the dark corners of the language.  

That doesn't seem to be the point of the book.  Let me quote the authors 
from the preface: " This book is designed to teach the reader the full 
semantics of Ada."  Let me further quote from 
Robert B. K. Dewar's foreward; " (this book) ... is the first book on Ada 
which makes a serious and comprehensive effort to go beyond the minimal 
knowledge of the design issues in Ada which suffice to allow carrying out 
routine Ada programming activities."    "...it will also be very useful to the 
Ada programmer whose compiler or program malfunctions in a mysterious 
language related manner ..."

My point is that we must understand Ada at least to the level of the 
B&M book.  It is not just an "illustration", it is "the language".  As 
Robert Dewar says, the other books contain only "minimal knowledge".  
In my opinion minimal knowledge is necessary to get started but not 
enough to build the systems that we need to build.

SO, go get the book!

sam harbaugh
---

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: courtel@cenatls.cena.dgac.fr (Nicolas Courtel)
Subject: Paradise-3.1 is available
Organization: Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aerienne, Toulouse, France
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:39:48 GMT

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Organization: Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aerienne, Toulouse, France

Differences with 3.0 are the following:
- Bug corrections in READ, RECV, and RECVFROM procedures
- Added service entry routines (GETSERVENT, GETSERVBYNAME, ...)
- Added REXEC procedure

The new source code is available on ftp.cenatls.cena.dgac.fr, in directory
pub/export:
-rw-r--r--   1 50       32         241167 Dec 22 14:10 paradise-3.0.tar.Z
-rw-r--r--   1 50       32          23654 Jan  8 19:23 paradise-3.0to3.1.patch.Z
-rw-r--r--   1 50       32         240143 Jan  8 19:20 paradise-3.1.tar.Z

For obvious reasons, the patch does not contain diffs for the Postscript version
of the doc.

--
Nicolas Courtel - courtel@dgac.fr

>>>        The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.         <<<
>>>            The goal of nature is to build better mice.            <<<
From: bwalker@nosc.mil (Beth Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Help w/ Hypercard XCMD using Ada
Date: 8 Jan 93 20:08:30 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego

Has anyone ever written an Apple Hypercard function using the
Meridian Ada compiler?  I am trying to write a simple XCMD, but
I can't find any documentation telling me how to link my XCMD
to a Hypercard stack.

Any help would be appreciated.  Please email me (bwalker@nosc.mil)
as I don't read this newsgroup very often.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
Subject: Re: Bindings for Micro Soft Windows to Ada
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 02:56:39 GMT

In article <5787@dsacg3.dsac.dla.mil> hso6230@dsacg3.dsac.dla.mil (Greg A Buskirk) writes:
>
>  Does anyone know where I could retrieve bindings for 
>Micro Soft Windows to Ada ? 
>
Meridian offers a pretty good Windows-based compiler with a usable "thin"
binding to the Windows API. I take it that this is what you were after.

I believe that RR (Janus) has a Windows version as well, with an API.
I don't think the bindings are available separately; the Meridian
compiler costs about $500., commercial price, I believe.

'Course, with pragma Interface, somebody could write a binding...
But it would probably cost much more in time than that compiler costs.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"Americans want the fruits of patience -- and they want them now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pierre Castori
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada2C
Date: 5 Jan 93 09:05:46 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne


--

Hi everybody,

Has anybody out there already heard about an Ada to C translator ?

I know, I know, you may ask why getting back to the Middle Ages when already
in the XXIst Century. This is because many, many people are still in the
Middle Ages so you need a time machine to communicate.

Anyway, if you know about such a translator could you please let me know.

Thanx,

==========================================================================
Pierre Castori
Dept. of Computer Science
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
EPFL - IN ECUBLENS
1015 LAUSANNE (Switzerland)                  Email: castori@litsun.epfl.ch
==========================================================================

Disclaimer: as usual.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: fraser@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fraser Wilson)
Subject: Semantics Question
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:23:34 GMT

Hi.  I have a small question regarding exceptions, the answer to which
I couldn't find in the ARM.  Basically, what happens if you raise a
local exception, but don't handle it before the end of the block in which
it is declared.  Like this:

procedure p is

  procedure q is
    e : exception;
  begin
    raise e;
  end q;

begin
  q;
end p;


Is the result defined somewhere, or not?  If there are handlers in
subprograms that call p, and they handle any exception (ie, with an
others clause), will they catch e?  Should the program abort as soon
as it leaves e's scope?

Thanks in advance,
Fraser.
======================================================================== \._,
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream  | Fraser Wilson,           < /
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?     | Melbourne University     _'
The transient pleasures as a vision seem      | fraser@cs.mu.OZ.AU      //
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.  | Phone - +61 3 344 7877 // NZ!
============================meat is murder===================================
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)
Subject: Re: STRING starts at 1: why?
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 07:57:02 GMT

I actually once had a list of reasons to start arrays at 0 vs 1, which I've
conveniently lost. In the spirit of starting a new one, I'll try to recall what
I can from the old list. An array that is a STRING probably has other special
properties.


Start at 1:
  'LENGTH is same as 'LAST
  Negated indexes are unique (I used this fact once in a program)

Start at 0:
  Mod works better (for hashing)
  Convient when doing work with 'polynomial-like' things


Rich
  
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Richard E. Pattis                     "Programming languages are like
  Department of Computer Science         pizzas - they come in only "too"
    and Engineering                      sizes: too big and too small."
From: sandy@beeker.cs.umass.edu (Sandy Wise)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Legal liability in the EC
Date: 7 Jan 93 15:07:52 GMT
Reply-To: wise@cs.umass.edu
Organization: Organization?  I thought entropy would take care of that...
In-reply-to: firth@sei.cmu.edu's message of 7 Jan 93 12:54:06 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.075406.6948@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
   As of 1993 January 1, all products distribuited within the European
   Community carry an implied warranty of merchantability, including
   all computer related products, and this warranty cannot be disclaimed.

   In most countries of the EC, in fact, it is illegal to attempt to
   disclaim this implied warranty; in the United Kingdom (at least),
   it is a *criminal offence* to do so.

   About time too, if you want my opinion.

I'm not a lawyer, I'm a software engineer, so this opens a great many
questions in my mind...

What exactly are the implications of these required warranties... The
ability to provide software "as-is" has been the foundation of the
large and growing collection of freeware.  If I am open to legal
action because I was willing to offer a system to the community that I
built and found useful for free (as the UCI Arcadians have done with
Aflex and Ayacc).  I suspect the response will not be to make efforts
to protect myself by verification of the software but instead to not
make it available.

Before this gets blown all out of proportion, there are some additonal
legal questions that should be answered... Is there law that limits
the extent of damages? (Here in Massachusetts, if you sue a vendor you
are limited to triple damages).  If not, is it permissible to add
language to the licence to limit the damages to some multiple of the
purchase price (none)? Etc...
        /s
--
Alexander Erskine Wise /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Software Development Laboratory
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ WISE@CS.UMASS.EDU /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\ This situation calls for large amounts of unadulterated CHOCOLATE! /\/\/\
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: An Ada Program Does What It Says?
Date: 6 Jan 93 21:57:58 GMT
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc

In <1993Jan4.082827.11773@hellgate.utah.edu> matwood%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Atwood) writes:

>In article <9301031530.AA17787@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu>, SAHARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU writes:
>>I searched B&M's book and noted each example program whose 
>>output is "indeterminate" or "implementation dependent".  I 
>>noted the page number on which the answer appears.  

>(deleted)

>>My warning stands.  Ada code looks deceptively readable.  The 
>>reader must understand the language translator and the 
>>runtime environment to be able to correctly read an Ada 
>>program.

>I just finished reading those books, and yes there do seem to be a lot of
>indeterminate and compiler dependent "thing" in the Ada standard.  A co-
>worker and I discussed it for a while and made the observation that probably
>every language has these "gotcha"'s, they just aren't as well documented
>or understood.

>Stuff like expression ordering, floating point representation, concurency,
>etc, will always be indeterminate.

>Not to trigger yet another C vs Ada flamefest, but this expression in
>C is a classic example...

>  r = (i++ == ++i)

It is also, of course, quite well documented and understood.  You are
correct in stating that just about every language is going to have
syntactically correct constructs which produce undefined or
implementation-defined results.  You are, however, incorrect in your
assumption that Ada is the only language in which these things are
well documented or understood.

[One typically sees a lot more people making mistakes like that above
in C simply because one sees a lot more inadequately or untrained
people working in C than one sees working in Ada -- and we're back to
the 'popularity' issue.]

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: youngb@IDA.ORG (Christine Youngblut)
Subject: Contacts at the following 2 universities...
Organization: IDA, Alexandria, VA
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 18:44:20 GMT

Does anyone have a contact point they could give me for the computer 
science/software engineering departments at either of the following 
2 universities:
  - Colorado State University (with reference to the Ada Maintenance Tool
    Chest)
  - University of Florida (with reference to a public domain test data
    generation tool they developed)

Thanks - Christine Youngblut (Institute for Defense Analyses)
From: PETCHER@OTTAWA.dseg.ti.com (What? Me Ada?)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Karl Nyberg, where are you?
Date: 9 Jan 93 15:26:35 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Internet

Please excuse a private message.

Karl, our nameserver can't find you at grebyn.com.  Is there some sort of 
routing info we might be lacking?

Malcolm
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: tne@world.std.com (Thomas N Erickson)
Subject: Re: Ada for Transputers!
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 04:12:40 GMT

g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (George C. Harrison, Norfolk State University) writes:

>   We have been exploring using transputers for some undergraduate classes. 
>Part of our plan was to use Ada to program the transputers, which come at
>very reasonable price; however, it appears that the Ada vendors that have
>compilers for the transputers charge at a "per node" basis.  "Per Node" is fine
>for a network of various users, but a transputer-based platform is a single
>user system (in our case).  Is there a compiler for transputers (on a PC) that
>is < $1000 (educational price)?  (I'm NOT a hardware expert.  The transputers
>are 400's, I believe!)

At Alsys, we support Ada on transputers and we have a special LEAP program
for educational discounts.  I am not sure of the price for the transputer,
but if you call Kathy Ruggiero on (617)270-0030 she should be able to fill
you in.


-- 
Tom Erickson
Alsys
tne@world.std.com
From: karl@GREBYN.COM (Karl A. Nyberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: INFO-ADA Digest V92 #458
Date: 11 Jan 93 14:22:32 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Grebyn Corporation

In article <29502@oasys.dt.navy.mil> you write:
>Folks,
>
>2.  What internet address should I send mail to requesting
>inclusion on the INFO-ADA Digest distribution?

info-ada-request@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu always worked for me.

>3.  Also, does anybody know if you have to resubscribe to the
>Ada Clearing House Newsletters?  I had been receiving it for 
>approximately 18 months, but I have not received one since
>around June 1992.  My address has not not changed during this
>time frame.

Try calling them at 703-684-1477.

-- Karl --

Karl Nyberg			-- karl@grebyn.com
Grebyn Corporation		-- 1-703-281-2194
P. O. Box 497
Vienna, VA 22183-0497
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: mab@wdl39.wdl.loral.com (Mark A Biggar)
Subject: Re: Basic embedded concepts and Ada
Organization: Loral Western Development Labs
Distribution: comp.lang.ada
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 18:15:16 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.022544.15622@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com> hawkinsg@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Glenn Hawkins) writes:
>Question:  Will shifts, ANDs, ORs, etc be available in Ada 9x?

Yes these coem along with the new unsigned integer types in ada9x.

--
Mark Biggar
mab@wdl1.wdl.loral.com


Xref: sparky comp.lang.ada:3929 comp.compilers:2123
From: robichau@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Compiler Construction in Ada
Keywords: courses, Ada, books
Date: 8 Jan 93 20:41:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: comp.93-01-050
Reply-To: robichau@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov
Organization: New Technology, Inc.

Here's a vote _for_ Fischer/LeBlanc. It's the text for the undergrad
compiler course at Georgia Tech, and the class project usually revolves
around building a compiler, using a Pascal-ized lex/yacc suite for the
parser and Pascal for the remainder.

IMHO the discussion and description in the Ada version of LeBlanc is more
clear and more appropriate for undergrad courses than the dragon book.
YMMV.

-Paul
-- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG
Mission Software Development Div.
New Technology, Inc.
-- 
Send compilers articles to compilers@iecc.cambridge.ma.us or
{ima | spdcc | world}!iecc!compilers.  Meta-mail to compilers-request.
From: tas@madre.dasd.honeywell.com (Todd A Sorensen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: CPU resources for embedded Ada programs
Date: 4 Jan 93 21:33:34 GMT
Organization: Honeywell Flight Management Systems
Nntp-Posting-User: tas

In article <cffs.14@fox.nstn.ns.ca>, cffs@fox.nstn.ns.ca (Doug Brown) writes:
> real-time Ada projects will require about 1 MB of RAM and 3 MIPS of CPU 
> power for every 20 KLOC.
> 

Our experience with 80960mc's and the Tartan compiler is about 10 to 11 bytes of
code and data per source line of code.  So for a 20 Ksloc program we need about
256K bytes of RAM and 256K bytes of ROM.  Horsepower needs are usually dependent
on the rates that the system requires and the processor loading that each of
those processes puts on the system. For example -- we have an older system that
has 200k + lines of Pascal but runs fine on a 800KIP machine.  All because we
allocated the processes and their priorities correctly.   A 3 MIP processor
would run the same system at the same rates, but it would be idle more, so we
could  bump up the rates at which the processes run to get better system
response.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Todd A Sorensen               Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems Division
(505) 828-5611                internet: tas@dasd.honeywell.com
                              fax: (505) 828-5500
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: bs@alice.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: An Ada Program Does What It Says?
Summary: how to start a flamefest
Date: 4 Jan 93 19:37:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.24550
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ



matwood%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Atwood @ University of Utah) writes

 > Not to trigger yet another C vs Ada flamefest, but this expression in
 > C is a classic example...
 > 
 >   r = (i++ == ++i)

Even when you point out that all languages have `gotchas' something like
this just begs for someone to jump in.
Xref: sparky comp.lang.ada:3934 comp.compilers:2130
From: heesmann@antpc.ant.uni-hannover.de (Geert-Dieter Heesmann)
Subject: Wanted: Realtime-Extension for Meridian-Ada running on DOS
Organization: Inst. f. Allgem. Nachrichtentechnik
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 15:38:22 GMT


 Dear Ada Community,

 for educational purposes we've got an Ada Compiler from Meridian.
 It runs an PCs (286, 386) with DOS. 
 Unfortunately, the smallest time interval for the DELAY-statement
 is about 54.9 ms (because of DOS). For some of our applications 
 that is too long.
 Is there an extension to the DOS-Implementation, that it 
 makes possible to use shorter time intervals? Or does anybody know
 a trick to shorten the interval?

 
   
   Mit freundlichen Gruessen 
    
   Geert-Dieter Heesmann        University of Hanover
                                Institut fuer Allgemeine Nachrichtentechnik
                                Appelstr. 9a
                                W-3000 Hannover 1, Fed. Rep. of Germany
                                Tel.: +49 511 762-2836
                                Fax:  +49 511 762-3030

   **************************  E N D E  ************************************

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
From: esther@verdix.com (Esther Lumsdon)
Subject: Re: Trying to fix Ada LRM for PC?
Organization: Verdix Corp
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 17:56:02 GMT

dtl8v@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Heracleitus) writes:

>  Has anyone fixed the Ada LRM that is found in the simtel archives
>(and oak and wuarchive)?  I retrieved the LRM program for the PC from
>various sources, and all behaved the same.  I am running ANSI.SYS on
>my PC, and the LRM.EXE file, but every search for a specific section
>number, e.g., 13.1.4, finds something else, like 13.9.8 or so.
>Obviously, the searching algorithm is off, and I'd like to know if
>there's a fix, or if I'm the only one having this problem.  I'd also
>like to know the address of the program author at Norfolk State
>University if there is no current fix for the problem.

You're the only person who has reported a problem.  Given the tendency
of Ada vendors to ship windowy readers for LRM these days, I suspect
that few people will ever use this program.

I am no longer employed by Norfolk State.  I submitted this program 
to SIMTEL in 1988, and have not modified it since.  Your report
surprises me, because I thought I tested this sort of stuff back in
1988.  I can test under a VADS 6.1 compiler, to see if I can duplicate 
your problem.  However, I do not have an Ada compiler for an MS-DOS 
machine, or an MS-DOS machine usable for programming.  If this problem 
is specific to MS-DOS, I don't have the resources to do anything about it.
-- 
------ Esther Lumsdon  Product Support Engineer, Verdix Corporation
  205 Van Buren St  Herndon, Virginia, USA
  esther@verdix.com  or  esther%verdix.com@uunet.uu.net