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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1dd28d5040ded1f8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-08 09:11:20 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-xfer.siscom.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!spool0901.news.uu.net!spool0900.news.uu.net!reader0901.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3CD94E63.3050607@mail.com> Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 12:12:19 -0400 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020417 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Announce: Grace project site operational References: <3CD88FBD.4070706@telepath.com> <3CD91E31.1060004@telepath.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: KBC Financial Products Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@mosquito.nyc.kbcfp.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.3.3 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10 X-Trace: 1020874279 reader1.ash.ops.us.uu.net 24437 204.253.250.10 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:23725 Date: 2002-05-08T12:12:19-04:00 List-Id: Ted Dennison wrote: > I'm not sure I understand either the question or the suppossed problem. > The only way you could possibly get different types back for a size > operation would be if there *were* such a generic parameter. In one of those long philosophy threads (I think it's the strong typing one), someone said that one of Ada's strengths is that you can have separate types for counting separate things, so that you cannot accidentally mix up the counts. He referred to counting apples and counting apple cart pushers. So if this is considered important, then the container generics ought to have a count type parameter for counting how many members they have. Otherwise, if they just return a generic integer, and you have an AppleCounter, you would have to convert the result. But then you could as easily convert the count of an AppleCartPusherList to an AppleCounter, so you would lose that automatic safety. So I was wondering if the GRACE lists had such a parameter. The original poster also said that C++ programmers tend to dismiss things like this as not useful enough to bother with, even though they can put together classes that could simulate such separate integer types. I'm a C++ programmer, and I agree with that, so I thought I would just strew some more complication into the path of the GRACE lists for the Ada programmers who do care :-)