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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Not intended for use in medical,
Date: 1997/05/09
Message-ID: <EACHUS.97May9175402@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
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References: <3.0.32.19970423164855.00746db8@mail.4dcomm.com>
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Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-09T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <E9vH6G.88E@world.std.com> bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes:

  > Instead of ++, I would be just as happy with:

  >     Increment(Average_Daily_Rate_Of_Pay);

  So use it.  This is perfectly legal Ada, and I have a package
kicking around somewhere with those "additional" operations which are
procedures.

 > But my point was that the side-effect issue is more important than this
 > lexical stuff.  I would object to:

 >    Nice_Long_Array_Name[Increment(Nice_Long_Integer_Name)] := ...;

 > on the same basis (where this (evil) Increment both modifies its
 > argument, and returns a result).  I realize I'm mixing Ada and C
 > notation there.

   Which is why it didn't get added to Ada 95, in spite of Robert
Dewar's arguments in favor.  The few cases where you do want functions
with side-effects (random number generators being the prime example)
can be written in Ada with a bit of extra work in the private part.

  > Perhaps.  Who knows?  I think it's mainly a cultural thing --
  > everybody does it that way, so new programmers learn to do it that
  > way.

  No, it is cultural, but the language syntax does seem to have a very
strong influence on the culture.  One reason I believe that Algol 68
never succeeded was that the cultural imperitives implicit in the
notation were in conflict.  I once thought that translating the
reserved* words into German, Dutch, or Czeck would have made people
mcuh more comfortable with it.

   *Yes, in the standard they are not techically reserved, but did
anyone have an implementation where they weren't?


--

					Robert I. Eachus

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