Re: Static in 9X

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

These seem very straightforward questions, answered in an accessible
way by the rules in the RM (and note I am not one to generally say
that the 9X RM is easy to read).

1,2,3,5 are of course non-static. I have no idea why anyone would think
that the rules in the RM even suggest for a moment that they are static,
so it is hard to quote specific rules. The RM rules basically say what
*is* static, and none of these rules cover any of these cases.

4 is static, because of para 9 ("a type conversion whose subtype mark denotes
a static scalar subtype, and whose operand is a potentially static expression)

I don't see that an Ada vendor is particularly in the business of 
interpreting language rules like this, though in practice quite a few
"bugs" submitted are just misunderstandings of the language (we find this
in GNAT bugs for example).

What would be useful is for you to explain why you thought that the
other cases (1 = composite type, 2 = record field, 3 = user defined
function, 5 = unchecked conversion) were possibly covered by any
of the items in paras 3-12. That might give a clue as to something
that is not as clear as it should be in the RM.