Re: Derived private interface

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Jul 6, 3:05 pm, Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauh...@futureapps.de>
wrote:

> But, seriously, as they reportedly say in ARG circles, almost no one
> understands Ada.  Therefore, if a substantial amount of understanding
> is necessary in order to use indicators properly, there is something
> wrong somewhere, IMHO.

Either I'm having difficulty following your argument, or you've
totally lost the plot.  You do not need a lot of understanding to use
overriding indicators.  If you declare an operation and you intend
that this operation replaces (overrides) the same operation for the
parent, then add "overriding".  If you declare an operation and you
intend that it be a NEW operation that did not exist for the parent
type, then add "not overriding".  Seems simple to me---you don't need
a "substantial amount of understanding" for this!

If you use one of these indicators, the compiler will then complain if
your keyword doesn't match the compiler's concept of whether the
declaration is overriding or not.  Then you (1) check for typos, (2)
check to make sure a new, conflicting operation hasn't been added for
an ancestor or progenitor type, or (3) in the complex case where
visibility rules cause an inherited operation to disappear, then
you'll have to figure out what's going on.  Case #3 is the difficult
one.  But in this case, if you *don't* use the overriding indicator,
*then* you need a substantial amount of understanding of the language
rules, because the compiler won't check for you; it will assume you
know what you're doing.  So I think you have it backwards---you need a
substantial amount of understanding *NOT* to use overriding
indicators.

                                   -- Adam