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: 103376,54c513170bafd693 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Al Christians Subject: Re: Desirability of C++ Date: 2000/05/02 Message-ID: <390E87F7.1DE6595E@easystreet.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 618168934 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <390DEC7F.9429C82C@online.no> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Organization: Trillium Resources Corporation MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-05-02T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: tmoran@bix.com wrote (re Turbo Pascal strings): > > How do those differ from > ... is new Ada.Strings.Bounded.Generic_Bounded_Length(255); 1. They arrived in usable form about 15 years sooner. 2. Less code bloat from multiple types with different maximum lengths in the same program. 3. No type-checking problems when mixing strings of different maximum lengths in assignments and expressions. Every string is a string, and all the string operations and the whole library of string functions will operate on all of them (cf Ada 95). This certainly has a downside, but the obvious inconveniences of Ada 83 string operations must have cost Ada quite a bit of acceptance. Compared even to Ada 95, the rules for Turbo Pascal string handling are somewhere in the gray area between liberty, license and anarchy. Somehow, people, particularly young male software developers, seem to like that kind of stuff (cf C/C++). Before Ada 83, the most popular vaguely similar language with the best support for structured programming was probably PL1, which was used in about 10-15% of mainframe shops according to surveys I saw. So, the PL1 programmers were the best shot at early adopters to popularize Ada, if that were to happen. They would have been particularly likely suspects as they expanded from the mainframe to PC, for the PL1 implementations for the PC were also scarce and limited. But string handling with Ada 83 was no fun compared even to PL1 as of 1965, so Ada would not have been an easy sell even if there were good and competitively priced Ada compilers for DOS PC's back in the 80's. Al