Re: ADA FUNCTIONS TO PROCEDURES

[Henri Altarac <haltarac@rain.org>]

dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller) wrote:
>
> In article <D5Aoy5.JCH@ss3.magec.com>,
> James A. Krzyzanowski <jakrzy@ss5.magec.com> wrote:
> >Henri Altarac (haltarac@rain.org) wrote:
> >
> >: In some (strange) coding standard I saw, they required that
> >: function should not have any side effects. Procedure could.
> >
> >What's so strange about that?  At Magnavox, we DO have that as a coding
> >standard!
> 
> I think he was implying it was strange because it required it in a
> strict sense (?).  We have the "No side effect" rule in our standard
> too, but it's immediately followed up with a statement that one MAY
> break the rule if 1) it provides a more readable product, 2) it is a
> "safe" usage ( a good example is the state of a random number
> generator), and 3) It passes a code review of peers and at least one
> "expert"
> 

David is correct. The coding standard is was thinking about was 
very poor : nothing was explained/justified and many rules were
to strict and limitative. At the opposite of the SPC guide.

Also I consider any limitation should be automatically verified
by some tool used along the compiler and the side effect rule is
one that is quite hard to implement.

And even then, you always find somebody to work around the rule
like using an automatic tool to transform functions to procedures...

-----
Henri Altarac