Re: some questions re. Ada/GNAT from a C++/GCC user

[Laurent.Guerby@enst-bretagne.fr (Laurent Guerby)]

[comp.lang.c++ removed since this has nothing to do with C++]

Robert A Duff writes
[deleted]
: Sorry to keep disagreeing with you, John, but this seems like the tail
: wagging the dog.  If the reason I'm required to add 3 extra junk lines
: of code, just to declare a simple variable, is because of tasks, then
: that's just poor language design.  
[deleted]

   If you follow  the  GNU Coding Standard,  here  is how you  have to
declare (indent) an inner block (loop, if ...) :

   {
      int local;

      foo (local);
      bar (global);
   }

    (I don't think the  blank line is  required, but I've nearly never
seen a C program that do not put a blank line between locals and code,
even in "bad" written code.) The Ada version looks like :

   declare
      Local : Integer;
   begin
      Foo (Local);
      Bar (Global);
   end;

   Hey, the  number of line  is the same !  Cool isn't it ;-). Ok, you
type more charaters.

   BTW, in any real code, the source documentation will add some lines
to explain the   use of local   (if not clear  according  to the  name
choosen) and the algorithm, making all this discussion a bit useless.

   And an Ada   declaritive region is  not  a C  one,  just play  with
aggregates and  try to translate it  in C,  it  will add a  few "junk"
lines  of code ;-). Semantic differences  between a declarative region
and a handled sequence of statement put aside.

: - Bob

-- 
--  Laurent Guerby, student at Telecom Bretagne (France), Team Ada
--  "Use the Source, Luke. The Source will be with you, always (GPL)"
--  http://www-eleves.enst-bretagne.fr/~guerby/ (GATO Project)
--  Try GNAT, the GNU Ada 95 compiler (ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat)