From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: fac41,8ff80a74f45b5cd3
X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public
X-Google-Thread: 103376,8ff80a74f45b5cd3
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: doylep@ecf.toronto.edu (Patrick Doyle)
Subject: Re: Visibility and access to "public" attributes
Date: 1997/09/02
Message-ID: <EFw9rA.JwB@ecf.toronto.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 269888370
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: skule.ecf
Sender: news@ecf.toronto.edu (News Administrator)
References: <EFuyKK.J61@syd.csa.com.au> <EFv4p4.ME2@syd.csa.com.au>
 <01bcb787$eeb5a180$7e80400a@gavinspc>
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 1997-09-02T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <01bcb787$eeb5a180$7e80400a@gavinspc>,
Gavin Collings <gcollings@sperry-sun.com> wrote:
>
> [Discussion of how Delphi can make functions use the syntax of
>  an assignment statement]
>
>Apart, perhaps, from the overhead of having to declare fRadius separately,
>this method looks certainly more flexible and probably in most interesting
>cases more direct than the Eiffel approach.

  IMO, this is equivalent to being able to do this:

class GOOBER

feature

  volume : INTEGER is do ... end

  volume := (new_value : INTEGER) is do ... end

end

  Now I could write something like this:

my_goober.volume := my_goober.volume + 1

  While apparently an assignment, this would call "volume", add 1 to
the result, and then call "volume :=" passing it the new value as
an argument.

  While this may be nice syntactic sugar, naming a feature "volume :="
seems to have virtually no advantage over "set_volume".  

 -PD
  

-- 
--
Patrick Doyle
doylep@ecf.utoronto.ca