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From: porton@ex-code.com (Victor Porton)
Subject: Let's change semantics of "use type"
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 14:20:23 +0500
Date: 2002-11-08T09:26:31+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3dcb8347$0$299$bed64819@news.gradwell.net> (raw)

I am suggesting (for the next Standard) to change the semantics of "use
type" so that it would make visible not only primitive _operators_, but
all primitive _operations_.

It seems (at the first glance) that changing Standard such the way would
not make any correct program incorrect. (However it would make some current
programs not compilable. If this is too bad, it can be instead denoted as
"use all type;" for using all operations, not only operators.)

The rationale is that this is a convenient way for dealing with a type 
imported from a package without the need of many rename directives.  These
directives may make a long list and are "dirty" for both writing and
reading. (Reading this list one may not understand for exactly what is
present an item of the list and so not know (without experiment with a
compiler) whether this item can be removed without breaking the program.
So in certain sense the current Ada is not perfectly readable.) With "use
all type" programmers will less tend to write multi-level designators
which are both unreadable (especially when there are several such
designators in an expression) and error-prone as one may forget y in
x.y.z (mistakedly writing x.z) and get wrong behavior of the program.



             reply	other threads:[~2002-11-08  9:20 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2002-11-08  9:20 Victor Porton [this message]
2002-11-08 12:01 ` Let's change semantics of "use type" Adrian Hoe
2002-11-08 13:38 ` Robert A Duff
2002-11-08 20:52   ` Randy Brukardt
2002-11-08 18:12 ` Victor Porton
2002-11-09 15:20   ` Robert A Duff
2002-11-11  5:28 ` Victor Porton
2002-11-11 15:22   ` Robert A Duff
2002-11-11 15:59 ` Ted Dennison
2002-11-12  8:24   ` R. Tim Coslet
2002-11-12 15:39     ` Ted Dennison
2002-11-12 18:18       ` Preben Randhol
2002-11-12 17:29 ` Victor Porton
2002-11-12 17:32 ` Victor Porton
2002-11-18  1:25 ` Richard Riehle
2002-11-19  4:13 ` Victor Porton
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