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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,714a8558b02b32bb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-01-21 11:23:10 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshosting.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!news-feed01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net!nntp.frontiernet.net!tdsnet-transit!newspeer.tds.net!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GUI was Re: why Ada is so unpopular ? Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:22:15 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <100tkcshhdi686a@corp.supernews.com> References: X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4613 Date: 2004-01-21T13:22:15-06:00 List-Id: "amado.alves" wrote in message news:mailman.12.1074699773.281.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org... <<...If GtkAda was going to return a list of something, shouldn't it ought to be a *Charles* list rather than something that was specific to GtkAda? ...>> > Absolutely. This is a fascinating issue. I thought about it when I wrote here before, but kept > silent. But now that you've touched it, I'll add a bit. A *lot* of Ada libraries, including already > standard ones (e.g. ASIS) and upcoming standard (e.g. Directory_Operations), deal with a lot > of data structures, and so they should be using the standard for that (Ada.Containers, also > upcoming, AI-302). The result would be clearly a good thing, more cohesion both in the > standard and in applications. This is motivation number 1 for Ada.Containers in my paper > in Ada-Europe 2004 (about persistent containers, but touching the general issue in passing). I can't speak for ASIS, but in the case of Directory_Operations, there is no place where a container could usefully be used. Containers are mainly useful in non-critical parts of your application (where time and/or space requirements aren't critical), and that cannot be said with certainty about the various standard libraries. Moreover, you certainly don't want searching operations returning vectors of file names, you would have no idea whatsoever what the time/space usage of that would be. (Directories with thousands of files aren't uncommon.) I wrote a package which did that in the very early days of Ada, and quickly abandoned it because of problems with large result sets. Of course, if you need a vector of files, just create it, it's easy enough. I agree with your basic point (that the libraries of Ada should be integrated where possible), but the ones that are really bad offenders (like the Ada.Strings hierarchy) already exist and aren't going to have major changes in them. Randy.