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From: Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Bye-bye Ada ? (Ada95 Wholesale Changes?)
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 19:53:56 -0800
Organization: AdaWorks Software Engineering
Message-ID: <3E432DD4.7F256C85@adaworks.com>
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:33859
Date: 2003-02-07T03:44:20+00:00
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"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:

> If I look at a spec of a package I want to "clean up", and
> I don't like the way the data type is presented, and want
> to make some sort of wholesale change to the package, I'll
> first make the necessary tweaks or major changes to the
> specs. This may include:
>
>   - Changing constants to enumerated types / vice versa

One of the things I find useful is to make constants into function
declarations.  As a trivial example,

       package Constants is
           function Ten return Integer;
           pragma Inline(Ten);
           function Avogradro return Float;
           pragma Inline(Avogadro);
       end Constants;

something I cannot do in C++ because of the need to have a full
implementation to create an inlined function.   This allows me
to compile the body separately, have whatever implementation
I wish, and modify the implementation if the need arises without
changing the specification.

>
>  - Changing a weak type to a strong type
>   - Making types more range specified (subtypes)

Not sure you meant that as shown.   Subtypes actually relax
the type model a little.  Also, I have seen problems with declaring
too many different real number types in some programs.

Richard Riehle