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Date: 3 May 92 02:27:23 GMT
From: sunset.sda.com!blakemor@uunet.uu.net  (Alex Blakemore)
Subject: Re: TEST: Which lang. needs least lines?
Message-ID: <141@sunset.sunset.sda.com.COM>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1314@adpplz.UUCP> martin@adpgate.UUCP (Martin Golding) writes:

> For COBOL, the Interesting Program would copy between two files containing
> very large records with lots and lots of fields of the same name but
> different organization. COBOL has a single command to move the equally
> named fields from one record to another. The other languages either don't
> encompass the concept of records, or would require explicit instructions to
> reorganize the fields. (Even APL :-Pthpthpth).

Not too many people seem to take advantage of it, but Ada has a
similar capability.  Derived types can have different rep clauses
than their base types - or can be packed for example.  if so, then
the type conversion actually converts the data from one representation
to the other, rather than just appeasing the compiler's type checking.


-- 
Alex Blakemore
alex@cs.umd.edu blakemor@marlstone.com
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