Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SEI.CMU.EDU!Marc.Graham
From: Marc.Graham@SEI.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada and Decimal Arithmetic
Message-ID: <8806282157.AA03259@bx.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 88 21:57:03 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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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.

Does anyone share this view? Does anyone have a solution (in the form
of Ada code)? Does anyone know of a compiler which supports the rep
clause: for T'small use T'delta; when delta is a power of ten? Has anyone 
else heard the rumor: "It'll be fixed in the next release" (of the ACVC)?

Marc H. Graham                    Software Engineering Institute
marc@sei.cmu.edu                  Carnegie Mellon University
(412) 268 7784                    Pittsburgh, PA   15213