Re: How to get nice with GNAT?

[brbarkstrom@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014 8:27:19 PM UTC-5, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 13:33:01 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber
> declaimed the following:
> 
> 
> >
> >Does leave OUT only parameters hanging, unless one just takes the view that
> >IN OUT and OUT both rely upon copying from procedure local memory to return
> >parameter memory at the same point (and an IN OUT copies from the parameter
> >memory to local memory upon entry).
> >
> 
> 	ADDENDUM: Original Ada OUT parameters were write-only from the
> viewpoint of the procedure too... Ada 95 allowed them to be used as
> read-write within the procedure.
> -- 
> 	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN

The last several posts look at exception handling from several different
philosophical points of view.  It might be interesting to try to see
what these different points of view suggest with respect to
1) detection of exceptions during the initial debugging phases of development,
2) "routine" handling of exceptions during operations, for example which
   exceptions should be logged, which should we allow users to correct (bad
   input), and which are serious enough to make us want to shut down the whole
   system,
3) leaving clues about assumptions on exception handling that might reduce
   maintenance costs when a system needs revision in the future.

It sounds like there's enough divergence of opinion that collecting these
differences and creating some suggestions of practical use to programmers 
might have some value - Ada Gems or a paper at HILT or Ada-Europe might be 
interesting.  Maybe we could start by collecting material for a history
of exception handling, see if we could get some practical and quotable
quantitative experience (like how many debugging person-hours could appropriate
exception handling save), and suggestions about how to feed this experience
into Ada revisions.

Bruce B.