From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ae67f75abbc71211 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-02-26 20:52:28 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why not using [] instead of () for array? Date: 26 Feb 2002 20:52:28 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0202262052.4506b096@posting.google.com> References: <9ff447f2.0202241719.446bf17b@posting.google.com> <5ee5b646.0202250639.5002d518@posting.google.com> <3C7B3FC1.734F9367@mida.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1014785548 21377 127.0.0.1 (27 Feb 2002 04:52:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Feb 2002 04:52:28 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20496 Date: 2002-02-27T04:52:28+00:00 List-Id: Mats Karlssohn wrote in message news:<3C7B3FC1.734F9367@mida.se>... > I don't know the linguistic term for the little ring. I don't think there is one, A with a circle above it is a separate letter in Swedish that is distinct from A, in other words this is not an A with some kind of diacritical mark. I asked a Swedish friend "what's the name for the little circle above the A", and he thought for the moment and said "little circle above the A" :-) After all, you could ask "what is the linguistic term for the dot over a lower case I", and you would get a similar answer. To know whether a character such as this is a separate letter or a letter with a diacritical mark of some kind such as an accent, you can apply Jean Ichbiah's crossword puzzle test. For example in French you can have an E that is accented across but not down, but you could never have a Swedish crossword puzzle with A horizontal and A-circle vertical. This came up in the context of the Ada 95 design (in particular the CRG discussion). Jean wanted e and e-acute to be considered equivalent. That makes some sense since for example in French, it is in practice optional whether to put the accent over the upper case E (formally it is required, but the French are so use to the practice introduced by typewriters of omitting the accent for upper case letters, that quite a few French folks I have talked to have insisted that the accent is not permitted -- they are wrong as you can quickly tell from looking at any academic publication in French :-) See, who would have thought that the circle over an A has a direct Ada connection :-)