Re: 4 beginner's questions on the PL Ada

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Mike H <postmaster@ada-augusta.demon.co.uk> writes:

>>And isn't that the same way with you? If you were to explain the C
>>for loop to another programmer, would you not just write
>>
>>for (i = 0; i < STOP; i++) { printf("Pretty clear, huh?\n"); }
>>
> No. Because I would not know the type of the loop control variable
> and hence which of a number of different possible loop constructs
> would best suit the questioner's needs for that particular
> occasion, e.g.

> for ... loop;  ... end loop;
> for ... in reverse ... loop; end ... loop;
> while ... loop; ... end loop;
> loop ... ; exit when ...; ... end loop;

That's Ada, not C. The for loop in C is the for loop in C, and the
best way to explain it is to say it is excellent for cases where
the increment variable is usable inside the loop, as in iterating
an array, *or* when it is known beforehand how many times
something should be done. Then you post the syntax (the code, the
example), and - perhaps - mention that 'continue' and 'break' can
be used to circumvent execution flow. This is the way I would have
done it. If you would have queried further on the context, and
dumping URLs to documentation, that's your call.

> Please understand that other contributors to this news group
> have provided alternative answers to your questions because your
> questions have not always been specific enough to get a specific
> answer.

That's not the point. There are (almost) always many ways to do
things. (That typically hasn't to do with the question, anyway,
but is the normal case.)

The point is, if you talk about programming by being active with
*code*, this is a lot better in many, many ways, and worse in
maybe one or two ways.

Code is not superficial or lazy. Code *is* programming!

-- 
Emanuel Berg - programmer (hire me! CV below)
computer projects: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
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