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Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 10:13:11 -0500
From: "Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>
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Subject: Re: pointer questions
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Date: 2005-10-27T10:13:11-05:00
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Robert A Duff wrote:
> "Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam@spam.com> writes:
>
>>...In fact,
>>you'll rarely need pointers at all.
>
> I've heard that claim many times in this newsgroup.  It doesn't match my
> experience at all.  I use pointers all the time.

I agree.  The Ada projects I've worked on, from flight simulators, to 
command and control systems, to data analysis tools, to software 
development tools, have all made use of pointers, some more than others. 
  There's so much dynamic activity going on, often with no way to know 
in advance just what to expect in terms of configuration, ordering, etc.

In some thread that once touched on this subject, I vaguely recall 
someone saying one shouldn't use pointers, instead an appropriate 
container should be used.  Okay, so the pointers are being wrapped in a 
container.  That's not what I'd call "not needing pointers", they're 
just not out in plain sight.

-- Marc A. Criley
-- McKae Technologies
-- www.mckae.com
-- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out