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From: bill@nospam
Subject: Re: Question for the folks who designed Ada95
Date: 1999/04/28
Message-ID: <7g8390$225c@drn.newsguy.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 472070682
References: <7g2qu4$ca4$1@usenet.rational.com> <37278218.ADE17A46@lawson.com>
Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://www.newsguy.com]
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-04-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <37278218.ADE17A46@lawson.com>, Brian says...
 >
>> Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> writes:
>>
>> > What is missing from this discussion is an argument that
>> > it is advantageous to distinguish array and function
>> > references ... Yes, people want [] because they are
>> > used to it from (some) other languages, but that's a
>> > very weak argument.
>>

>> Function calls can have side effects; array indexing does not.
>> It seems useful to distinguish those two.
>
>Arrays are potentially modifiable, functions are not.
>
>giving
>
>    pure functions =similar to= constant arrays
>    functions with side affects
>    non constant arrays.
>
>Should it be usefull to syntatically distinguish between all these.
 
you guys are all arguing like language lawyers (may be because you are :)

we, your average run-of-the-mill programmers do not care about all this
mumble jumble.  

All what we know, is that looking at something written as a[i] tells 
right away that it is an array, while with a(i) you are not sure what 
it is in Ada.

If Iam maintaining someone else's code, it helps me to understand the code 
faster that way.

Someone argument about them modifying the array to a function and not breaking
someone else code (becuase in Ada "()" is used instead of "[]") is a 
very weak argument. In the real world, one would design their data to 
be hidden from users, and have access methods to read/write to it, (can we
says OO here?) and so, users would never care if you used arrays or 
functions anyway. you should use 'messages' :)

bill