Re: list strawman

[dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)]

"Mark Lundquist" <no.spam@getalife.com> wrote in message news:<6i%_7.8890$fG.50588@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>...
> Indeed it's a bug in Ada95 if the generic uses "=" without importing it
> explicitly.  Otherwise, an overridden "=" is not visible to the generic, and
> predefined equality "reemerges".

I implied in an earlier repsonse that this issue has already been
addressed. Thomas pointed out to me privately that it had not, and
he's quite correct. I was thinking of assignment, which we had already
talked about and decided upon.

The killer for assignement was the large amount of effort required for
no benifit to most people. We have the same issue of little benifit to
most people here, but the effort required isn't nearly the same, as
"=" should already be available as a function for users to supply.
There's also the issue Mark points out of built-in "=" re-emerging,
which seems to be to be a pretty darn good argument.

> Don't know if that's been fixedin Ted's latest, it may have...

Not at this moment.

I'd like to see if anyone has a good objection to it, but I personally
can't see one. The only issue I can see is that it takes your typical
instantiation from:

   package Integer_Lists is new Containers.Lists.Unbounded (Integer);

to 

   package Integer_List is new Containers.Lists.Unbounded (Integer,
"=");

Instructors will have to explain the purpose of the extra parameter,
but I don't think that's too big a deal. I'd like to hear from one of
them though.