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From: "singlespeeder" <singlespeeder@32sixteen.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Calendar package
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 20:27:54 -0000
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Date: 2001-03-19T20:27:54+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

If (when?) the calendar package is updated can someone please not break the
existing interface and leave it entirely as is.

I currently develop systems that have to compile with different Ada 83 and
Ada 95 compilers on different OSs (Dec Ada on OpenVMS/Gnat on Windows). The
one thing that keeps biting me - despite backward compatibility is the way
that interfaces have changed between standards. I thought respecting
interface concepts was generally agreed to be A Good Thing, and can't
believe that Ada 95 didn't follow this philosophy.

Where the Ada 95 standard defined a new package (e.g. Command_Line) I can
write my own package body (or at least the bits I use) from the Ada 95 spec,
and write the code as if the Ada 95 package exists. Simple. Where Ada95
broke an existing Ada83 package (Text_IO gives me jip) I am often caught out
and so far I just use the lowest common denominator. Why?

Because I don't want to write my own Text_IO that implements all the Ada 83
Text_IO features that I currently use and extends it for the Ada 95
features, nor do I want to do conditional compilation (which I was doing for
a while but it got unwieldy even with make).

If someone wants to add more functionality to an existing Ada predefined
package can they please create a new package (e.g. Text_IO2) and leave the
existing package alone.

Thanks.

singlespeeder