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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: disjoint ranges ?
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 03:12:22 GMT
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In article <39E6E890.3B13E7A9@laas.fr>,
  Philippe Torres <ptorres@laas.fr> wrote:
> It's very true but i find that, range being an attribute so
> common, the union of ranges would be very useful and not that
> unreasonable. it could
> only improve Ada's advantage in this domain. Perhaps in some
> future ?


No, it could be over all damaging. Every new feature you add
to a language damages it by adding to the understanding,
programming, description, and implementation complexity.
A feature like this is actually *quite* complex, think for
example, that we would have to allow dynamic bounds for the
ranges, and then the checks for disjointness get tricky
to describe (e.g. can several ranges be flat or superflat?
if they are, can bounds overlap for the flat ranges? etc)

That's only the tip of the iceburg complexity wise.

But the point is that you have to make sure that the value
of the feature more than undoes the damage done by its
addition. The burden of proof is tricky in this case, and
I doubt a convincing argument can be made for adding this
feature to the language.


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