From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f47e0c6e2e5fd00d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Matthew Heaney" Subject: Re: Function name problem Date: 2000/01/16 Message-ID: <01qg4.3200$%Y3.193028@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 573469533 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit References: <85qecu$24r$1@nnrp1.dej a.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" X-ELN-Date: Sun Jan 16 12:40:28 2000 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net 948055228 38.26.192.67 (Sun, 16 Jan 2000 12:40:28 PST) Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Mime-version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 12:40:28 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-01-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Harald Schmidt 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