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From: tsikes@netcom.com (Terry Sikes)
Subject: Re: Operators -> unit analysis
Date: 2000/01/06
Message-ID: <8531v6$6qk$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 569261264
References: <38620350.48F8FC08@gecm.com>
 <84thof$9r3$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net> <387383D0.4EA02E95@earthlink.net>
 <850tl9$thu$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Organization: NETCOM / MindSpring Enterprises, Inc.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-01-06T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <850tl9$thu$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <387383D0.4EA02E95@earthlink.net>,
>  Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Terry Sikes wrote:
>>
>> > ...
>> > One thing I'd like to see in both languages is the ability
>to use a
>> > set of non-reserved Unicode symbols for operator
>overloading, to
>> > disambiguate with the normal operator symbols.
>> >
>> > Terry
>> > --
>> > tsikes@netcom.com
>>
>> I don't insist on unicode, but I would also like more
>operators that could
>> be overloaded.
>
>This was an issue discussed at length during the design, and
>the great majority felt it was an unnecessary complexification
>to add such operators. Even a limited proposal to add a single
>operator to be used for "almost implicit" conversions failed.
>I don't see what has changed to make it worth rearguing the
>point.

Was this point argued at length after the decision was made to add the
various annexes?  I'd think that this would be better received if it
was tied to the Numerics annex, since certainly this would be the
major area of use.

Lack of a large number of overloadable operator symbols seems like a
major lack in an otherwise numerics-friendly language.

Unicode support may be a bit over the top ;) but there are alternative
syntax possibilities like:

   --  Cross product
   Mat3 := Mat1 (x) Mat2;

(This approach is borrowed from the jpp Java preprocessor).

Ah well, perhaps it will make it in Ada 200x.  :-)

Terry
--
tsikes@netcom.com