From: Harald Schmidt <Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de>
Subject: Re: Function name problem
Date: 2000/01/16
Date: 2000-01-16T21:05:36+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <B4A7F12A.45EC%Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 01qg4.3200$%Y3.193028@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net
in article 01qg4.3200$%Y3.193028@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net, Matthew
Heaney at matthew_heaney@acm.org wrote on 16.01.2000 21:40:
> In article <B4A76C00.4583%Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de> , Harald Schmidt
> <Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de> wrote:
>
>> But can someone
>> explain why this restriction exists?
>
> The operator symbol "=" to mean equality has a long history, dating to
> 1577, when it was used by Robert Recorde:
>
> "Today, Recorde's =, the only symbol he introduced, is universally
> embraced. Equality is one of our most important concepts, and it
> deserves a unique symbol. The use of = for assignment in Fortran has
> only caused confusion, as has the use of = for assignment and == for
> equality in C."
>
> Quoted from p. 16 of
> A Logical Approach to Discrete Math
> Gries, Schneider
>
>
> The use of the == operator in C to mean equality is a flaw in the design
> of that language.
>
> Not providing an "==" operator in Ada is a deliberate feature of the
> language, and is therefore not a restriction at all. Were it allowed,
> "==" would only vitiate the language, just as it did in C.
>
...my intenstion was not to implement a functional operator
equivalent to C/C++. My primary business is Smalltalk, and
I was trying to implement the equal method "=", means
equality of any attribute of two given objects. The second
method "==" (basis for this discussion) is a identity
method comparing the identity of two given objects.
Harald
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-01-16 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-01-15 0:00 Function name problem Harald Schmidt
2000-01-15 0:00 ` Jeff Carter
2000-01-16 0:00 ` Harald Schmidt
2000-01-16 0:00 ` David Starner
2000-01-16 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr.
2000-01-16 0:00 ` David Starner
2000-01-18 0:00 ` Howard W. LUDWIG
2000-01-16 0:00 ` David A. Cobb
2000-01-16 0:00 ` David Starner
2000-01-17 0:00 ` David A. Cobb
2000-01-17 0:00 ` David Starner
2000-01-17 0:00 ` Jeff Carter
2000-01-16 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
2000-01-16 0:00 ` Harald Schmidt [this message]
2000-01-16 0:00 ` Gautier
2000-01-17 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
2000-01-26 0:00 ` Florian Weimer
2000-01-15 0:00 ` Pascal Obry
2000-01-15 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox