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From: nebbe@lglsun.epfl.ch (Robb Nebbe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: An observation of Ada (may offend)
Date: 17 Mar 1995 15:23:02 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
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Date: 1995-03-17T15:23:02+00:00
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In article <3kbkm1$41o@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>, bill@valiant.gmrc.gecm.com (R.A.L Williams) writes:

|> 
|> Anyway, FWIW, here's a list (in no particular order). I'd be interested 
|> to see how many strike a chord with other people:

...

|> b. No bit level manipulation (fixed in Ada95 but only for unsigned
|> ie. mod INTEGERs, I can't test a sign bit, not that I need to) HCTBAEL.

It is trivial to write a generic package providing bit manipulation on
arbitrary integer types in Ada 83.

I would expect that it would usually be more appropriate to check if
a value was < 0 rather than checking the sign bit but I'll assume you
had a good reason.


|> 
|> h. And a special one for Ada95: poor encapsulation of objects. I can
|> define a 'member function' for a class by including the class in the
|> parameter list. Unlike C++ or Eiffel, I can do this *anywhere* in my code,
|> even a nested function hidden somewhere seemingly 'irrelevant'. Whereas
|> other features of Ada go out of their way to force the programmer to
|> follow 'good practice' (sometimes a matter of opinion), this seems
|> very lax.

If you declare a private type then the only place you can see the
implementation is from inside the package where the type is declared
(or a child package). You can declare subprograms that have parameters
of this type elsewhere but that certainly doesn't qualify as a 'member
function'.

The idea you are looking for is 'primitive operations' which a
explained in the LRM.

Robb Nebbe