Re: fyi, very interesting Ada paper OOP vs. Readability

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

On May 10, 4:33 am, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:

> People hate it when I write:
>
>           if Ada.Strings.Unbounded."="(My_String,
> Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_Unbounded_String ("open") then ...
>
> because I refuse to use use clauses in almost all instances.

Interestingly, this is a single case where I'm ready to make an
exception and allow the use clause. The reason is not only to make the
above more readable, but to actually admit that Unbounded_String and
String should have equal treatment. The fact that they come from
different packages and one of those packages has the privilege of
having "implicit clause" is a details that should not be exposed.
After all, Unbounded_String and String both represent the same high-
level design concept (that is, they represent the same concept at the
data modeling stage, for example) and differ only in some tradeoffs,
like the set of operations vs. memory usage scheme. These low-level
tradeoffs are not enough to keep these two type so apart, so I usually
do use Unbounded and later write without hesitation for example:

procedure Do_Something (A : in String,
                        B : in out Unbounded_String);

without unnecessary package qualifications.

In short: String and Unbounded_String represent the same concept and
should have equal "coding look and feel".

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com