Re: Ada95 OOP Questions

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

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> So grep will not be enough, even if you ban USE. Really you need decent
> tools to build Ada programs, and relying on grep for locating defining
> occurrences of subprogram references is pretty miserable (note for
> example that it fails in any case in the overloaded case). It is hard
> for me to believe that there are Ada environments with no better
> capabilities than grep for finding things.
> 

The only environment I have ever used that had anything better than grep
was DEC's LSE/SCA combination. (I THINK it was "SCA", its been a while).
SCA was painfully slow, even on multiprocessing VAXen. I tried it for two
weeks before giving up on it.(Which made me hardier than anyone else on the
project by about a week and a half). Apparently its no easy task to chase
down references, even for a multiprocessing computer and Ada 83. The
experience gave me a whole new respect for our "no use" coding policy.

> With GNAT, you have two possibilities. For static analysis, you can use
> gnatf, and then if you like, use the emacs interface to get straight from
> applied to defining occurrences. (note that soon we will integrate gnatf
> with gnat1 making this possibility a bit more convenient).

That sounds cool. It makes sense that the compiler (or something built off
of it) could do the most efficient and accurate job of chasing down 
references. But how useful is this? Is it fast enough to be more of a 
help than a hinderance? Does ANYONE do this? I take it you don't, since 
you don't use emacs.

--------------------------Different Issue-------------------------------------

> As in all style matters, I don't like absolute rules, and for sure it is
> annoying to see programs use units that have been designed for use without
> USE and insisting on not using the USE, giving us highly useful names
> like Posix.Posix_Error :-)

From my point of view, it is very annoying that folks like the Posix group
INSIST on naming things in a redundant manner. It is made worse by the fact 
that the naming indirectly encourages use of (arguably) unsafe "use" clauses.
What is wrong with "Posix.Error"? It reads the same as "Posix_Error", but
gives the maintainer more information about the object.


-- 
T.E.D.          
                |  Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com  |
                |  Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net              |
                |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison         |