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From: "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@der.edf.fr>
Subject: Re: Why is it Called a Package?
Date: 2000/04/07
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Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> a �crit dans le message :
Pine.BSF.4.21.0004061305320.6588-100000@shell5.ba.best.com...
> I think if the syntax were to be redone I'd like the issue of "()" versus
> "[]" for array indexing to be reexamined. Then we could also think about
> some syntactic sugar for overloading "[]" as in C++. The restrictions on
> the character set that were part of the original Ada requirements don't
> make a lot of sense to me now, though the restriction to ASCII is OK.

I don't think we want that. A very nice consequence here is that you can
easily change an abstraction from:

   package P is
      Some_Value : array (1 .. 10) of Integer;
      --  first quick implementation using basic array
   end P;

to

   package P is
      function Some_Value (N : in Positive) return Integer;
      --  real implementation using a complex structure
   end P;

(or the other way around) without modifying all client code.

I really don't see what would be gained by using "[]"... a more
C/C++ syntax :)

Pascal.

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