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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7d533acec91ae16
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: Samuel Mize <smize@imagin.net>
Subject: Re: Question for the folks who designed Ada95
Date: 1999/04/28
Message-ID: <7g5kcg$hrr@news2.newsguy.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 471698058
References: <7g2qu4$ca4$1@usenet.rational.com> <7g4jqm$1rkg@news1.newsguy.com>
 <7g4mic$1sr0@news2.newsguy.com> <7g4tqn$5vk$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Organization: ImagiNet Communications, Ltd.
User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-981002 ("Phobia") (UNIX) (AIX/3-2)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-04-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>Here is
> the full quote from the AARM if people do not have it
> at hand:
...
> This seems quite straightforward and convincing!

Well, not to me, but only because I don't understand it.
I copied the AARM quote below.

Can someone explain to me why, for instance, 'Min isn't considered a
predefined operation?  It's predefined, it operates on objects of the
given type.  But it wasn't made an operator, so it apparently wasn't
considered a predefined operation.

I'm not arguing against the passage, I'd just like some help
understanding it.

Best,
Sam

> 
> <<AARM B.2 (9-a)>>
> 
> 9.a   Reason:  We considered making shifting and rotating
> be primitive operations of all modular types.  However, it
> is a design principle of Ada that all predefined operations
> should be operators (not functions named by identifiers).
> (Note that an early version of Ada had "abs" as an
> identifier, but it was changed to a reserved word operator
> before standardization of Ada 83.)  This is important
> because the implicit declarations would hide
> non-overloadable declarations with the same name,
> whereas operators are always overloadable.
> 
> Therefore, we would have had to make shift and rotate into
> reserved words, which would have been upward incompatible,
> or else invent new operator symbols, which seemed like too
> much mechanism.
> 
> <<end of quote>>

-- 
Samuel Mize -- smize@imagin.net (home email) -- Team Ada
Fight Spam: see http://www.cauce.org/ \\\ Smert Spamonam