At 11:16 AM 10/26/01 -0700, Steven wrote: > From EdgeMailPOP3Server > >This probably doesn't answer/solve your question but I was just curious >what's the advantage in converting the C programs to Ada? I mean.. if the C >program works, isn't it better to just import the C program? One might want to do this for some, if not all, of the "ilities": readability, maintainability, portability, enhance-ability, reliability (run-time checks) and, depending on the code and compilers involved, possibly even efficiency. I have benchmarked some cases, for instance, where code generated by GNAT performed better than comparable code generated by the same vintage g++ compiler. If the number of lines of code is large (which it probably is, or Gordon wouldn't much care for a tool) one problem with doing an automatic ctoada conversion is you generally get poor quality Ada code, because you are limited to the very limited C syntax. In a large body of C code there are no doubt opportunities to dramatically simplify and improve the code by re-writing it, taking advantage of Ada language features. At the very least, if the C code were well written in the first place, there are probably many lines of code dedicated to range-checking, which could be eliminated in favor of run time checks. The run time checks can be expected to be more thorough and can be turned off when the code is deemed "proven". sro S. Ron Oliver, semi-retired professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering. www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sroliver caress Corporation is proud to be the U.S. representative for Top Graph'X, developers of high quality software components, using Ada. For more information, check out www.topgraphx.com.