B.2 The Package Interfaces

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Package Interfaces is the parent of several library packages that declare types and other entities useful for interfacing to foreign languages. It also contains some implementation-defined types that are useful across more than one language (in particular for interfacing to assembly language).

Static Semantics

The library package Interfaces has the following skeletal declaration:

package Interfaces is
    pragma Pure(Interfaces);

    type Integer_n is range -2**(n-1) .. 2**(n-1) - 1;  --2's complement

    type Unsigned_n is mod 2**n;

    function Shift_Left  (Value : Unsigned_n; Amount : Natural)
        return Unsigned_n;
    function Shift_Right (Value : Unsigned_n; Amount : Natural)
        return Unsigned_n; 
    function Shift_Right_Arithmetic (Value : Unsigned_n; Amount : Natural) 
        return Unsigned_n;
    function Rotate_Left  (Value : Unsigned_n; Amount : Natural)
        return Unsigned_n;
    function Rotate_Right (Value : Unsigned_n; Amount : Natural)
        return Unsigned_n; ...end Interfaces;

Implementation Requirements

An implementation shall provide the following declarations in the visible part of package Interfaces:

Signed and modular integer types of n bits, if supported by the target architecture, for each n that is at least the size of a storage element and that is a factor of the word size. The names of these types are of the form Integer_n for the signed types, and Unsigned_n for the modular types;
For each such modular type in Interfaces, shifting and rotating subprograms as specified in the declaration of Interfaces above. These subprograms are Intrinsic. They operate on a bit-by-bit basis, using the binary representation of the value of the operands to yield a binary representation for the result. The Amount parameter gives the number of bits by which to shift or rotate. For shifting, zero bits are shifted in, except in the case of Shift_Right_Arithmetic, where one bits are shifted in if Value is at least half the modulus.
Floating point types corresponding to each floating point format fully supported by the hardware.

Implementation Permissions

An implementation may provide implementation-defined library units that are children of Interfaces, and may add declarations to the visible part of Interfaces in addition to the ones defined above.

Implementation Advice

For each implementation-defined convention identifier, there should be a child package of package Interfaces with the corresponding name. This package should contain any declarations that would be useful for interfacing to the language (implementation) represented by the convention. Any declarations useful for interfacing to any language on the given hardware architecture should be provided directly in Interfaces.

An implementation supporting an interface to C, COBOL, or Fortran should provide the corresponding package or packages described in the following clauses.

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