Re: Real syntax problems in Ada

[William Findlay <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 30/08/2012 23:34, in article
d9d6d423-cc2b-4e97-ac06-8e684c756006@googlegroups.com, "Adam Beneschan"
<adam@irvine.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, August 30, 2012 3:06:41 PM UTC-7, (unknown) wrote:
>> On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:13:02 AM UTC-4, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> 
>>> What are real problems with Ada syntax as opposed to the imaginary ones
>> 

>> Not that it's a syntax problem, but I've always been suprised by the choice
>> to use 'all' to explicitly dereference an access value; I don't think a
>> casual reader of the langauge would be able to guess what it does.
> 
> It makes some sense if A is an access to a record; then you can say A.abc for
> component "abc" in the record, A.xyz for component xyz, and A.all for the
> whole thing, i.e. all components.  Of course, to be consistent, that would
> mean that if A were an access to an array, we'd use A(2) for the index=2
> element, A(2..5) to refer to a slice of the array, and A(all) to refer to the
> entire array.  Oh well.

This is more a comment on the thread in general than on Adam's remark.

There is a famous quotation by Emerson: A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds.

While there is much to be said for a general predictability of style and
syntax, a principle that Ada follows by and large; it is also true that a
moderate variety of expression sharpens the attention and prevents a text
from melting into a homogeneous mass with few obvious points of reference.

Some of the proposals seem to risk falling into that trap, in my view.

I think Ada has it about right.

-- 
Bill Findlay
with blueyonder.co.uk;
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