Re: 'withing' problem

["David Crocker" <dcrocker@imsltd.com>]

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:uwfG7.2665$Vf4.1461632@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...

>   I thought toString might be intended for that, but then I'd expect it to
> return a fixed type like String, not some extendable (ie, variable) type
"seq".

The language we are starting from defines 'string' to be a pseudonym for
'seq of char'. 'seq' is a template (i.e. generic) and final (i.e.
non-extendable) class.

>   If toString takes "anything'class", then it's not a primitive of
"anything"
> and needn't be declared in the same package as "anything".  In particular,
> "toString" and "seq" can be declared together in a package that with's
> the package that declares "anything".

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. Normally, 'toString' would need to be
declared in the same package as the type for which it is being defined (so
it can access the data), but since 'anything' contains no data, in this case
we could define it in package 'seq', or in its own package. This might give
us a route to compiling the runtime library, although we would still need to
prohibit mutual cross-referencing between classes in the original source
when we are generating Ada.

David Crocker, Escher Technologies Ltd. www.eschertech.com