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From: Peter Amey <pna@praxis-cs.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Enumeration literal visibility and use type
Date: 1998/05/27
Message-ID: <356C45DE.5BF3@praxis-cs.co.uk>#1/1
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References: <6kej65$dnh$1@hermes.seas.smu.edu|
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Organization: Praxis Critical Systems
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-05-27T00:00:00+00:00
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John McCabe wrote:
> 
> fjh@cs.mu.oz.au (Fergus Henderson) wrote:
> >>So once again, I am merely asking for a reference to some documentation
> >>that might describe _why_ OPERATORS only were made visible
> >
> >Because explicit module qualifiers on OPERATORS look very ugly.
> 
> And explicit module qualifiers on enumeration literals don't?
> 

Not if suitable names are chosen.  Most of the difficulties with Ada 
prefixes and dotted names seem to arise because people fight the 
language rather than taking advantage of it.  Names should be chosen for 
their readability in context.  I much prefer:

package Valve is
  type T is (Open, Shut);
end Valve;

allowing:   DrainValve : Valve.T := Valve.Shut;

to the more common(in my experience) form:

package BasicTypes is
  type ValveType is (Open, Shut);
end BasicTypes;

which leads to: DrainValve : BasicTypes.ValveType := BasicTypes.Shut; 
which _is_ ugly.


Peter

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