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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!crdgw1!control!kassover
From: kassover@control.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: if UNIX then USE_C ?? (was: Reasons for drop)
Message-ID: <5638@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 1 Mar 90 00:29:17 GMT
References: <27187@cup.portal.com> <18175@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <5563@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <184@trwacs.UUCP>
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In article <184@trwacs.UUCP> epstein@trwacs.UUCP (Jeremy Epstein) writes:
>[I promised myself I wouldn't join this grudge match, but...]
>
>In article <5563@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>, kassover@jupiter.crd.ge.com (David Kassover) writes:
>> In article <204@puma.ge.com> jnixon@andrew.ATL.GE.COM (John F Nixon) writes:
>> Or even worse, I think, is the use of {} for many different kinds
>> of block statements.  In Ada I end a loop with end loop;  I end
>> an if with end if;
>
>While that's certainly true, look at how Ada overloads symbols.  For
>example, parentheses are used for parameters as well as subscripts

Sigh.  I promised myself I would stop.  Oh, well.
 

C is the first language  (no, wait a minute, I've repressed
Basic.  I think.  I can't remember...) I encountered that used [
] for subscripts.  Not to mention a doubly dimensioned array
using the notation [][]  (which *really* screwed me up once,
because the comma is an operator and the syntax x [a,b] is
perfectly legal, even when x is declared [i] [j])  In ada,
pointers are pointers and arrays are arrays, and never the twain
will share syntax.
 
In Fortran, there is really very little to distinguish a function
call from an array reference.  In fact, I submit that from the
standpoint of examining a program that contains a statement such
as
 
 	A = F (i,j,k)
 
it really doesn't matter whether a simple memory transfer or a
complex subprogram execution is called for.  What can screw you
up here is a "SIDE EFFECT", which Ada flatly refuses to allow.
(Has anyone out there *never* done something like:
 
	A = F(1)

where F was a function that caused a side effect that changed
*all* literal 1's to 3.14159265's (or whatever integer those bits
happened to represent?  What, not never?)
 
And while we're on the subject of side effects, the C treatment
of assignment as a function that returns a value, with the side
effect of making the assignment has balled me up more than once.
Especially when I tried to get too cute with fancy one-line
wonder macros that expanded in grand and glorious unanticipated ways...
 
 
Jeremy also mentions that in Ada the word end is used as a
closure for begin, and also as a closure for loop, and also as a
closure for if...
 
End all by itself ends begin.  End loop ends a loop, and if you
try to make it end an if, the compiler will complain.  If you
want to end an if, you must use end if;  If you want to end a
named loop, you must use an end loop AND reference the name of
the named loop.  End all by itself, without a matching begin,
will cause a complaint from the compiler.  This is a lot
different from } ending the last unmatched {.