Re: "negative count" and unsigned counts

I believe that clause is there because some bindings -- Java being one of
them -- simply do not have the concept of untyped integers. The IDL lays
out the desired behavior; the text provides a recommendation of how to
achieve that behavior when you can't enforce it through the type system.

The only alternative would have been to not specify the value as untyped in
the IDL, forcing _every_ binding to test sign and  throw the exception when
passed a negative value. I believe that was, in fact, suggested and
rejected; if you have a typesystem it's nice to be able to take advantage
of it.

Yeah, it could probably be explained better. But I don't think it's broken,
and I don't think it's fixable at this late date.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman, IBM Next-Generation Web Technologies: XML, XSL and more.
"The world changed profoundly and unpredictably the day Tim Berners Lee
got bitten by a radioactive spider." -- Rafe Culpin, in r.m.filk

Received on Friday, 19 September 2003 15:01:54 UTC