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Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 14:26:16 +0100
From: Philip Anderson <phil.anderson@amsjv.com>
Organization: Alenia Marconi Systems ISD
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada Idioms Progress Preview
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Date: 2001-08-07T14:26:16+01:00
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Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> 
> In article <SCIb7.37009$Kd7.22894159@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>, tmoran@acm.org writes:
> > Perhaps Ada should not have idioms.  An idiom makes no sense to someone
> > who doesn't know it, eg "He lost his marbles".  Unless it's so well
> > known that you can guarantee that a maintenance programmer will
> > recognize it, you shouldn't be, and shouldn't have to be, using it.
> 
>         MY_VAR : MY_TYPE := MY_FUNC(37);
> 
> is an idiom.  It is strange to someone just learning Ada, but familiar
> to somewhat who knows Ada.  That is analogous to idioms in English.

No, that's just syntax, analogous to English syntax.

Idiom: "an expression characteristic of a particular language not
logically or grammatically explicable".

Natural language idioms can be baffling for near-fluent learners as well
as beginners, while being perfectly familiar to native speakers.  And
American idioms sometimes confuse the British and vice versa.


That's not what we want for Ada, which was tmoran's point.  But
propagating easily-understood  example code is "a different kettle of
fish", in line with Ada's goal of being easier to read than to write. 
If there are a number of ways of achieving something, the easiest to
read is probably the best, but that may not come out of trial and error.

      My_String : string := Get_Line;

to read a string of unkown length is an idiom.


-- 
hwyl/cheers,
Philip Anderson
Alenia Marconi Systems
Cwmbr�n, Cymru/Wales