I've encountered an issue where using modular types in Ada that are not divisible by the system's Storage_Unit ( as defined in the runtime's system.ads ) will raise a Constraint_Error at runtime when accessed. I originally encountered this issue working on an bare-metal system using a minimal runtime while trying to read 12bit values from a buffer by overlaying the 12bit array over the buffer in memory. Does anyone know why this is occurring?
The following minimal example illustrates the issue I'm encountering. I tested this using AdaCore's GNAT 2019, compiled with the included zfp runtime. Using the standard runtime does not reproduce the issue.
with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Main is
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Modular type with standard size divisible by 8.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
type Type_One is mod 2 ** 16;
type Buffer_Type_One is array (1 .. 128) of Type_One;
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Modular type with non-base 8 size.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
type Type_Two is mod 2 ** 12;
type Buffer_Type_Two is array (1 .. 128) of Type_Two;
type Buffer is array (1 .. 256) of Character;
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Example buffer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Test_Buffer : Buffer := (others => ' ');
begin
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Will not raise an exception.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Test_One :
declare
Buffer_One : Buffer_Type_One
with Import,
Convention => Ada,
Address => Test_Buffer'Address;
begin
Put_Line ("Testing type one");
for I in Natural range 1 .. 16 loop
Put_Line ("Test: " & Buffer_One (I)'Image);
end loop;
end Test_One;
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Will raise a constraint error at runtime.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Test_Two :
declare
Buffer_Two : Buffer_Type_Two
with Import,
Convention => Ada,
Address => Test_Buffer'Address;
begin
Put_Line ("Testing type two");
for I in Natural range 1 .. 16 loop
Put_Line ("Test: " & Buffer_Two (I)'Image);
end loop;
exception
when Constraint_Error =>
Put_Line ("Constraint error encountered.");
end Test_Two;
end Main;
Here is the project file I used to compile this example:
project Test is
for Object_Dir use "obj";
for Exec_Dir use "build";
for Create_Missing_Dirs use "True";
for Languages use ("Ada");
package Builder is
for Executable ("main.adb") use "test";
end Builder;
for Main use ("main.adb");
package Compiler is
for Default_Switches ("Ada") use (
"-gnat2012",
"-gnatwadehl",
"-gnatVa",
"-gnaty3abcdefhiklmnoprstux"
);
end Compiler;
for Runtime ("Ada") use "zfp";
end Test;
I can't seem to find anything in the RM that would indicate why this would happen.
EDIT: Simon Wright below has figured out why this is happening. My naive understanding was that an instance of Buffer_Type_Two overlaid at the specified memory address would interpret the memory at this location as a sequence of 12bit values. It appears that this is not the case. It appears as though the compiler is rounding the size of the type up to 16bits, then raising a Constraint_Error when the 16bit value read from the array does not conform to the 12bit type.
If anyone can think of a better way to read a sequence of 12bit values from a location in memory in a sequential way I would greatly appreciate it, thank you.