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From: bralick@seas.smu.edu (William Bralick)
Subject: Re: Enumeration literal visibility and use type
Date: 1998/05/27
Message-ID: <6kh4eh$k7f$1@hermes.seas.smu.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 356977640
References: <6kej65$dnh$1@hermes.seas.smu.edu|
 <6kejt5$75u@gcsin3.geccs.gecm.com> <6kensr$fqq$1@hermes.seas.smu.edu>
 <6kf0r3$isj$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Organization: SMU - School of Engineering & Applied Science
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-05-27T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <6kf0r3$isj$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>,
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> wrote:
|bralick@seas.smu.edu (William Bralick) writes:
|
|>John McCabe  <jgm@hayling.cwmbran.gecm.com| wrote:
|>|... the "use type" clause is designed to provide 
|>|visibility to the OPERATORS of the type, NOT the type itself so the 
|>|behaviour you are seeing is correct.
|>
|>Yes ... and I had understood that visibility of the type name was still
|>restricted (one would always need to write doodah.state_value_type), but
|>I was convinced that the enumerals themselves would be visible to avoid 
|>(1) the use of the "use clause" or (2) defining a series of named constants.
|
|What's wrong with (3) just using explicit module qualifiers?

The scenario is that the package with the enumeration type declared 
in it includes other types (but no operations), (2) this package is 
not in my control (so I cannot create a subpackage), (3) the names 
are quite descriptive (e.g. doodah.thingy_bobber.whatchamacallit), 
(4) the standard abbreviations are also not in my control, are cryptic
and require the renames we find obnoxious, viz.

   package d_tb_what renames doodah.thingy_bobber.whatchamacallit;

   -- note that it is a manual inspection task to ensure that the 
   -- standard abbreviations are used
   
   whatever : d_tb_what.cool_enumeration_type; 

   -- or, worse

   whatmore : doodah.thingy_bobber.whatchamacallit.cool_enumeration_type;
   ...

   begin

     whatever := d_tb_what.state0;

     -- or, again worse

     whatmore := doodah.thingy_bobber.whatchamacallit.state0;

   end test;

|>So once again, I am merely asking for a reference to some documentation
|>that might describe _why_ OPERATORS only were made visible
|
|Because explicit module qualifiers on OPERATORS look very ugly.

I think that a similar argument applies to enumerals.  I admit, though,
de gustibus non disputandum est.

Best regards,

-- 
Will Bralick        ............_/......._/__/..._/.......__/..._____/
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