Re: Language Design Mistakes (was "not intended...")

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <dewar.863817572@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

  > The Ada 95 select .. then abort ... also introduces the same kind
  > of distributed overhead, but this time around, this overhead did
  > not seem to bother people (somewhat inexplicably if you ask me --
  > this is my least favorite feature of Ada 95 -- and we have noticed
  > repeatedly that people use this construct without any idea of what
  > the consequences are, not only on efficiency, but more
  > particularly on program structure, and they are easily argued out
  > of using it!)

    T'FAILURE and "select ... then abort" both try to provide for the
same need.  However, no one could come up with a working example of code
that used T'FAILURE.  That is what washed it out of Ada 83.  But the
need was still there in 1993.

    Incidently, I am not convinced that there is any additional
overhead attached to asynchronous abort that isn't there for the
"normal" abort statement.  It is just that the asynchronous abort
stucture convinces people to actually use the beast in something other
than a crowbar through the flywheel role.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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