Re: [Q] To initialise or not.

["Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>]

JP Thornley wrote:
> 
> We are currently looking at revision of the Ada coding standards
> (probably based closely on the Ada Quality and Style Guidelines as
> advised elsewhere).
> 
> However the issue of whether or not to require all scalar objects to be
> initialised has generated a substantial discussion without yet reaching
> a clear conclusion.  The Ada Quality and Style Guidelines are silent on
> this issue, so I would be interested in what other Ada users have found
> and what recommendations they would make.

I suspect it is silent on this issue, because the Ada (83) LRM is 
NOT silent on the issue. Section 3.2.1(18) reads:
"The execution of a program is erroneous if it attempts to evaluate a
 scalar variable with an undefined value."

In pracitice you don't even need to throw words like "erronious" around,
because a program that reads from an uninitialized variable generally
won't work. 

I don't see the overriding need to write a procedure to forbid every
possible erronious practice. But if you do, I'd just phrase it to 
forbid the situation above- "The program shall not attempt to evaluate
a scalar variable that has not been initialized".

-- 
T.E.D.          
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