Re: Valued procedures

[stt@houdini.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)]

adam@irvine.com wrote:

: >     function SideEffect (X: in out State) return Boolean;   -- Invalid

: To answer your question: yes, it was considered.  In fact, I recall seeing
: essentially your proposal in early drafts of the Ada language (around 1980 or
: 1981), before the standard was finalized.  I don't know why this feature was
: removed in the final version---perhaps someone can enlighten us?  (I'm not
: saying I miss this feature; I prefer not to have variables buried in the
: middle of an expression changing their values, but that's just my personal
: preference.)

You answered your own question.  Many people "prefer not to have
variables buried in the middle of an expression change their values."

Ada has consistently favored readability/understandability over saving
a few keystrokes.  That characteristic certainly can be annoying at 
times, though, but it tends to be pretty pleasant a week or two after 
you write the code, and you are trying to remember how it works ;-)

: 				-- Adam

--
-Tucker Taft   stt@averstar.com   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
Technical Director, Distributed IT Solutions  (www.averstar.com/tools)
AverStar (formerly Intermetrics, Inc.)   Burlington, MA  USA