From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,effb80d4bb7716dd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: John English Subject: Re: Wanted: Ada STL. Reward: Ada's Future Date: 1999/02/08 Message-ID: <36BEFD04.60616EE9@bton.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 441995373 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <790f4q$3l@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <36B856E4.D921C1D@bton.ac.uk> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: University of Brighton Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-02-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Brian Rogoff wrote: > John English thinks that the nicest thing about the STL is the way that it > works with C++ native arrays and pointers, so I see why he may think an > Ada library in this style won't be nice, and I completely disagree, since > I think the STL is nice even when just dealing with STL containers. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'd like to see a standard Ada library that provides a selection of containers and algorithms -- but in Ada it will either need a wrapper to provide a containerish interface for arrays, or Java-like conversion operations between arrays and container types. However the main thing is that it should: a) be *standard*, so everyone can use it portably and expect it to be universally available b) provide not just containers but also *algorithms* -- it's no good having linked lists, sets, maps and so on without standard operations like sort/search/partition/count. I think the way the STL uses pointer semantics is neat and very very clever. But as we've all been saying for the last week, we can't do it that way in Ada. What we need to do is find an Ada-natural way of doing what the STL does and providing the facilities that the STL provides. ----------------------------------------------------------------- John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk Senior Lecturer | http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je Dept. of Computing | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS ** University of Brighton | -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk -----------------------------------------------------------------