Re: How do I avoid 'use' in this case?

[ae@sei.cmu.edu (Arthur Evans)]

val@fcom.cc.utah.edu (Val Kartchner) asks how, without a 'use' clause,
to get visibility to equality and other operators on objects of a type
declared in another package.

Suppose you have

    package DEFS is
	type X is ...
    end DEFS;

    -- ----------------------------

    with DEFS;
    procedure USER is
	P, Q: X;
    begin
	...
	if P = Q ...		// #1 ILLEGAL
	if DEFS."="(P, Q) ...	// #2 Qualification to get visibility

#1 is the problem you had.  #2 is a way to use dot qualification of an
operator.  It's perhaps a bit ugly, but it works and is convenient if
there are very few uses of the operator in package USER.

However, there's another way to go if there are lots of uses of the
operators.

    with DEFS;
    procedure USER is
	P, Q: X;
	function "="(Left, Right: in X) return boolean renames DEFS."=";
    begin
	...
	if P = Q ...		// Now legal

Art Evans
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