Re: overload ":=" ???

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <ws9d91pcshi.fsf@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu>,
Laurent Guerby <guerby@gnat.com> wrote:
>David> a := To_Text("test"); -- seems too wordy
>
>   If you are in a race where the goal is to type the minimal number
>of character to write your code, I can tell you: ada is not the right
>language ...

I agree with David here.  The problem is not how much you have to type.
The problem is extra verbosity for the person READING the code.  Extra
verbosity is good if and only if it adds useful information for the
reader of the program.  Here, we have a character-string data type, and
yet we can't directly use string literals (or indexing, slicing, etc),
just because it doesn't happen to be the built in sort of string.  (The
built-in string types are no good, because they aren't dynamic enough
for this application.)

The To_Text conversion is just extra junk -- there is no "conversion"
going on at the conceptual level.

Note that the suggestion of calling it "+" proves my point -- if there
were really a useful operation going on here (at the conceptual level),
then everybody would agree that it should have a clear name, and calling
it "+" would be intolerable.

- Bob