Re: Looking for Ada Technique Name and References

[Wes Groleau <wwgrol@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>]

> Well, the topic has really changed, but if you are going to rank languages
> based on their support for the functional programming paradigm, I'd give
> Ada a fairly significant edge over C and C++ .....

I once saw an example where someone (who obviously 
misunderstood the "mandate") wrote an Ada 83 package 
containing (I'm probably getting some of this wrong 
due to elapsed time):

  - an enumerated type where the literals were
    LISP predefined function names.

  - an unconstrained array type of those enums

  - Various support subprograms (I forget the
    details) that took the array type as parameter.

  - A subprogram that iterates over an enum array
    object and uses each element as a case selector.

Then this guy wrote his whole program in LISP, and 
with a trivial syntax transformation, could compile 
it with an Ada compiler and run it:

with LISP_Support; use LISP_Support;
procedure Main is

begin

   LISP(( CAR (( CDR (( atom, atom, atom )) .....
      ..... ));

   -- I don't know LISP, so I made up the above
   -- just to give the flavor....

end Main;

If anyone else saw this, and can tell me where to find
it, I'd love to see it again!  :-)

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau