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From: Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: was Re: Ada / C++ comparison paper anymore
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 09:44:15 -0800
Organization: AdaWorks Software Engineering
Message-ID: <3C2374EE.956EF43B@adaworks.com>
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Date: 2001-12-21T17:38:51+00:00
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> In article <_xRT7.4398$xl6.682759@rwcrnsc54>, Mark Lundquist says...
> >"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
> >news:Pine.BSF.4.40.0112181924260.32168-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
> >
> >> happy with a bit more shorthand, like +:=
> >
> >As long as it doesn't return a value :-)
> >
> >I might prefer a more longhand shorthand :-), e.g.
> >
> >    X'Increment;                        -- (X names object of integer type)
> >    X'Increase (By => 1.23);     -- (X names object of any numeric type,
> >here a FP type)
> >    etc...

I recall seeing something like this in a program written at one of our client
sites.

            package Counter is
                 type Count is private;
                 function Inc   (Data : Count) return Count;
                 function Dec (Data : Count) return Count;
                 procedure Set_Increment (Data : in out Integer);
                 Overflow, Underflow : exception;
           private
                type Count is ...
           end Counter;

One could easily envision the functions as:

                function Inc   (Data : Count; By : Integer) return Count;
                function Dec (Data : Count; By : Integer) return Count;

It may seem like a little bit of overkill, but worked out quite well
for the problem at hand.   It was useful all through the project
when some kind of counter was needed.   It was easy to abuse
its behavior.  This is not the kind of shorthand that a += might provide,
but it was no hardship for those using it.

Of course, there is no possible Beaujolais effect either.  :-)

Richard Riehle