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From: Joachim Durchholz <joachim.durchholz@munich.netsurf.de>
Subject: Re: Safety-critical development in Ada and Eiffel
Date: 1997/07/18
Message-ID: <33CFC7A5.F8BF9DBA@munich.netsurf.de>#1/1
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References: <33CD1722.2D24@calfp.co.uk> <EDFz8q.E69@syd.csa.com.au>
 <33CE082E.65FF@calfp.co.uk> <JSA.97Jul17174044@alexandria.organon.com>
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Organization: ccn - computer consultant network GmbH
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 1997-07-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Jon S Anthony wrote:
> Unless you are using a pure functional or declarative language, you
> are writing "procedural" code.  Eiffel is about as close to either of
> these as Ada or Pascal or C.  So, if you are writing your assertions
> in Eiffel, you are writing procedural code.
> 
> If you really do want functional code - go use a _functional_
> language!

Sorry, this is plain wrong.
Assertions are indeed considered functional ("applicative" according to
Bertrand's nomenclature) in Eiffel.
I'm pretty sure that the reason is that assertions aren't intended to do
anything - they just specify conditions that have to be true at certain
points in execution. There isn't much procedural one could (or should)
do here.

Regards,
Joachim
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