Re: List container strawman 1.2

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> I can't always read all parts of a MIME message w/ my regular newsreader. In
> this case, your spec came through as garbage.

Sorry. MIME's been around for longer than Ada95, so I figured everyone
could handle it. The plaintext version is pasted at the bottom, then.


> Perhaps. But then First and Last make perfect sense in terms of iterating, and
> make it clearer which way "Next" and "Previous" go, so I think the terminology
> there is better. "Font" and "Back" are pretty standard terminology for list
> ends, so from that standpoint they should stay too. What would you prefer to see
> here?

OK, well, is the front of the list the first element? If so, why do they
need different names? Just because there's two common terminologies,
that doesn't mean both should be used in the same library. :-) Pick
either "first" for the start of the list or "front" for the start of the
list, but not both. Especially not both with different signatures.

> >I do it all the time in list-oriented languages. When you have a bunch
> >of lists you want to merge into one, it's very handy. It makes no sense
> >to leave it out, really, since it's not something you can easily code up
> >yourself.
> 
> If all you want is to tack them together, the "&" functions do that just fine.
> Do you actually need to merge lists by sticking one into a specific place in the
> middle of the other all the time?

It's not uncommon, usually when the sub-lists being inserted "mean"
different things, like you're inserting the children of the directory
after the directory entry during a breadth-first walk, say. And "&" has
the overhead of copying both lists, as well. 

> Making them procedures and/or limited
> really buys you nothing, and prevents some very useful constructions for those
> of us who like to do all the work we can in our declaration sections.

OK, that makes sense. I'll grant that I'm not familiar enough with Ada
programming to call that one. :-)

-- 
Darren New 
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