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From: Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada array contiguity.
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2023 19:54:13 +0200
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On 2023-02-19 19:10, J-P. Rosen wrote:
> Le 19/02/2023 à 15:59, Niklas Holsti a écrit :
>>> (BTW: try to find a definition of "contiguous". At byte level? At 
>>> word level? What if the element does not fill a byte?)
>>
>>
>> Indeed. But it seems to me that Arr'Size = Arr'Length * Comp'Size is 
>> the meaning usually intended for programming purposes.
> 
> Certainly not if Comp'Size is not an integer number of bytes.


I'm not so certain. By choosing various roundings-up of the component 
size, you can choose between "bit-contiguous", "byte-contiguous", etc.

For example, bit-contiguous with 2-bit components:

    type Comp is (A, B, C, D) with Size => 2;

    type Arr is array (1 .. 10) of Comp
       with Pack, Size => 10 * Comp'Size;

Nybble-contiguous with Comp'Size => 4, byte- (octet-) contiguous with 
Comp'Size => 8, etc.

(However, I haven't checked that eg. GNAT does the "right thing" with 
such Size clauses, just that it accepts them. It does require the Pack 
aspect for the array type when Comp'Size is not a multiple of 8.)


On 2023-02-19 17:08, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On 2023-02-19 15:59, Niklas Holsti wrote:
>> On 2023-02-19 16:28, J-P. Rosen wrote:
> 
>>> (BTW: try to find a definition of "contiguous". At byte level?
>>> At word level? What if the element does not fill a byte?)
>> 
>> Indeed. But it seems to me that Arr'Size = Arr'Length * Comp'Size
>> is the meaning usually intended for programming purposes.
> 
> Rather: the bit offset of an element is a linear function of its
> position.


That is ordering by index, but not contiguity: there may still be gaps 
between elements. However, I assume you meant that the slope of the 
linear function equals the component size, and then it includes contiguity.

The relationship of index order to memory-location order is certainly an 
aspect that should be considered when interfacing to C or HW.

Pet peeve: on more than one occasion I have been disappointed that Ada 
representation clauses do not let me specify the index-order of packed 
array elements in a word, relative to the bit-numbering order, and I 
have had to fall back to using several scalar-type record components, c1 
.. c7 say, instead of one array-type component, c(1..7).