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From: "Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.lhota.adarose@verizon.net>
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 <dmc700tmurmei4u19nof44803bv19f6d6o@4ax.com>
Subject: Re: The "()" operator revisited.
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Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 16:44:28 GMT
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"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
news:dmc700tmurmei4u19nof44803bv19f6d6o@4ax.com...
> More specifically, how would it be matched against a formal
> generic array parameter?

That is far more ambitious than this proposal. The basic idea of this
proposal is to allow array indexing notation for collections. For example,
assume that we have a hash table that maps employee names to employee
records. It would be nice if we could define "()" and "():=" for this hash
table so that we could write something like this:

    declare
       Rec : Employee_Record_Hash_Table;
    begin
       ...
       Rec( "Johnson" ) := This_Rec;
       Display( The_Rec => Rec( "Smith" ) );
       ...
    end;

To get something that could match a generic array parameter would require a
lot of restrictions on abstract arrays, in particular that the indice types
would have to be abstract discrete types. This would rule out abstract
arrays such as what we see in this example.