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From: dee@linus.UUCP (David E. Emery)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Inheritance and Ada
Message-ID: <21255@linus.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jan 88 20:36:14 GMT
References: <8712161858.AA06960@techunix.bitnet> <19902@linus.UUCP> <1673@ppi.UUCP> <1165@petsd.UUCP>
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, MA
In-reply-to: cjh@petsd.UUCP's message of 5 Jan 88 20:27:54 GMT
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.1 of Sun Aug  2 1987 on faron (berkeley-unix)



There are at least 2 implementations of YACC for Ada.  One was done in
Finland, and described at a SIGAda a while ago.  The other is from
U.C. Irvine (I think).  The result of the latter tool is a package
with the appropriate routines made visible, and the tables and such in
the package body.  

I do not see what the lack of a pre-processor has to do with YACC and
LEX.  There is nothing that prevents someone from building a
pre-processor for Ada.  YACC is not a pre-processor in the same sense
that the C pre-processor is.  

On the other hand, the more traditional uses of the C pre-processor
includes things that are included in the Ada language, including
visibility (#include vs with), constants (#define FOO 15 vs foo :
constant := 15), and in-line procedures, doable in Ada using either
pragma inline, or generics.

Rather, I would say that the Ada 'culture' substitues the semantics of
the language for the textual substitution provided by a pre-processor.
Given the choice between compiler-checked language semantics, and 
pre-processor substitutions, I think the former makes a lot more
sense.

				dave emery
				emery@mitre-bedford.arpa