Re: Function name problem

["Matthew Heaney" <matthew_heaney@acm.org>]

In article <B4A76C00.4583%Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de> , Harald Schmidt 
<Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de>  wrote:

> But can someone
> explain why this restriction exists?

The operator symbol "=" to mean equality has a long history, dating to
1577, when it was used by Robert Recorde:

"Today, Recorde's =, the only symbol he introduced, is universally
embraced.  Equality is one of our most important concepts, and it
deserves a unique symbol.  The use of = for assignment in Fortran has
only caused confusion, as has the use of = for assignment and == for
equality in C."

Quoted from p. 16 of
A Logical Approach to Discrete Math
Gries, Schneider


The use of the == operator in C to mean equality is a flaw in the design
of that language.

Not providing an "==" operator in Ada is a deliberate feature of the
language, and is therefore not a restriction at all.  Were it allowed,
"==" would only vitiate the language, just as it did in C.

--
Evolution is as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as
strongly as the earth's revolution around the sun rather than vice
versa.

Stephen Jay Gould, Time, 23 Aug 1999