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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Two ideas for the next Ada Standard
Date: 1996/09/05
Message-ID: <EACHUS.96Sep5191144@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 178755752
references: <50aao3$3r88@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <dewar.841590835@schonberg>
organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-09-05T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <322C40B1.534A@ehs.ericsson.se> Jonas Nygren <ehsjony@ehs.ericsson.se> writes:

  > And dispatching on return values from functions. But I still like
  > X.P better than P(X) because I immediately can see what object I
  > am operating on. With P(X,Y) one would have to go back to the
  > definition of P to know if it dispatches on X or Y. But this is
  > something one have to adopt to - Ada will never change to X.P
  > notation.

   People have been missing one very important point here.  In Ada (83
and 95) the X.P notation exists and has a slightly different meaning
from P(X).  In particular, X can be a task or protected object, and P
an entry or procedure of that object.

   The paradigm shift from C++ to Ada that many people miss is that
Ada has a both active objects and objects with non-blocking behavior.
(Operations on non-blocking objects can use hidden active objects to
manage access, but that is a consequence of other rules.)

   So if you REALLY prefer that notation use it.  You may be paying an
implementation time price, but Ada had already defined the notational
split this way, and overriding it when adding tagged types would have
been confusing.


					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...
--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...