Re: Ada generics

["Hyman Rosen" <hyman.rosen@gmail.com>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> The "encoding language" is outside the programming language,
> so it is not the language problem

Remember that Ada wishes to be case-insensitive, so it cannot ignore
Unicode issues if it wishes to allow Unicode characters in identifiers.
Not to mention "normalization form KC".

> No, it would not. Consider 1.0 / 3.0

I believe an arbitrary-precision rational number package can portably
represent 1/3! An encoded name for an instantiation involving floating
point numbers could simply represent the number portably as a rational
in lowest terms.

> But it is not same as having legal finite programs which cannot be compiled
> no matter how much resources you have.

So what? Since templates form a compile-time Turing-complete language,
C++ compilers can be sent into calculations which may or may not
terminate, just like programs themselves have always been able to do.
No one has palpitations over the fact that for some programs you can't
tell whether they're wrong or just haven't finished yet. Why should
anyone worry that there are some programs which you can't tell whether
they're wrong or the compiler hasn't finished yet? In order for a
compilation to not terminate, it must constantly generate new
instantiations, so anyway real compilers will just notice and give up.