Path: utzoo!attcan!sobmips!uunet!samsung!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AEARN.BITNET!K315640 From: K315640@AEARN.BITNET (Wolfgang Schreiner) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Re: Type transfer Message-ID: Date: 16 Nov 89 16:49:54 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Modula2 List Organization: The Internet Lines: 18 X-Unparsable-Date: Thu, 16 Nov 89 09:03:40 SET Reply to John Baker's question about type transfer in Modula-2: I guess, your trouble about type transfers arises from the fact, that type transfers represent low-level facilities that are NOT DEFINED in the Modula-2 language definition. Wirth writes in his "Programming in Modula-2" (second edition, page 125): " ... The correspondences (of transferred types) are NOT defined by the language Modula. They must be supplied by additional system-dependent information." Therefore type transfers depend on the actual implementation of the compiler one uses. So neither the text book you use nor the guy you asked are right. Type transfer functions are low level facilities that should be used only in machine-dependent system programs. They are NOT intended for high-level programming (for this purpose, Modula provides explicite type conversion on basic types by the standard procedure VAL).