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From: Harald Schmidt <Harald.Schmidt@tomcat.de>
Subject: Re: Function name problem
Date: 2000/01/16
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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