Re: FIXED bug in Medidian 4.1.1?

[netnews!schonberg!dewar@nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Tucker Taft shouldn't apologize for disagreeing with me when I am wrong!
I think his analysis is probably exactly correct, and it does indeed appear
that there is a bug.

Also, when I said that a compiler was required to excluded end-points that
are declared in some declarations, I didn't mean all declarations, just that
the rules do require such exclusion in some cases. This remains a mighty
peculiar feature to many programmers, who find it mysterious to get
a constraint error when they write:

	type x is delta x range y .. z;
	vx : x := y; -- ce raised here

We thought about trying to fix this in 9X, but decided against it (at least
according to my current understanding), because it would have introduced
subtle incompatibities, and not than many people use fixed point. The new
information systems annex *does* provide the necessary facilities, based on
use of a specialized form of fixed-point, for financial calculations.