Re: [Q] To initialise or not.

[rgilbert@unconfigured.xvnews.domain (Bob Gilbert)]

In article <75602294@dorunth.hb.north.de>, "Thorsten Behrens" <thorsten.behrens@dorunth.hb.north.de> writes:
> Captain, bei Sternzeit Fri, 26 Apr 1996 18:55:28 GMT empfingen wir folgende
> Nachricht von Robert A Duff:
> 
> > In the above, I would *not* write "X: Integer := 0;".
> 
> This initialization would indeed make no sense. But in the example above
> (and in many similar cases) you could have used:
> 
>    declare
>      X :  INTEGER
>        := 12;
>        -- 'X' is initialized to 12 here because ...
>        -- It will be changed to '13' under the following circumstances ...
>        -- in the code piece following.
>    begin
>      if not ... then
>        X := 13;
>      end if;
>      ... -- some reads of 'X'

You could get fully carried away and do something like:

    function Init_X(Condition : BOOLEAN) return INTEGER is
      type VALUES_LIST is array (BOOLEAN) of INTEGER;
      Init_Values : constant VALUES_LIST := (False => 13, True => 12);
    begin
      return Init_Values(Condition);
    end Init_X;

    declare
      X : INTEGER := Init_X(<condition>);
    begin
      ...  -- some reads of 'X'

-Bob