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Date: 7 Apr 92 17:13:35 GMT
From: wdl39!mab@ford-wdl1.arpa  (Mark A Biggar)
Subject: Re: how pure are functions?
Message-ID: <1992Apr7.171335.13631@wdl.loral.com>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <43123@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> ae@sei.cmu.edu (Arthur Evans) writes:
>    Are they free from internal state?
>No.

I would like to argue that the answer here should be YES.  Ada doesn't 
include a concept similar to C static variables, so any state kept for
an Ada function must be stored in a varible external to the function.
More then likely that variable is only visible in the body of the package
that defines the function and so is invisible to the user of the function,
but strictly the function itself has no "internal" state.  It can be argued
that in Ada only packages and tasks have "internal" state.

--
Mark Biggar
mab@wdl1.wdl.loral.com