title: Limits of Ada Fixed Point Type
body: <p>Reading this <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Types/delta" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Types/delta</a>
  has got me wondering what the limit value of <code>delta</code> is. </p>
  
  <p>For example</p>
  
  <pre><code>delta 127 range 0..1_000_000;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>needs one byte to hold the delta value.</p>
  
  <p>But</p>
  
  <pre><code>delta 0.0000000001 range 0..1;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>would need more bytes, right?</p>
  
  <p>So is there a limit to delta? Surely we can't go on indefinitely to smaller increments?</p>
  
  <p>In the above link it says</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>If the compiler accepts your fixed point type definition, it guarantees that values represented by that type will have at least the degree of accuracy specified (or better). If the compiler cannot support the type definition (e.g. due to limited hardware) then a compile-time error will result.</p>
  </blockquote>