Re: Constructing an object

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Matthew Heaney" <matthewjheaney@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ud5n0t1jv.fsf@earthlink.net...
> The big improvement in Ada 2005 is that there's new syntax for
> initializing a return value (I showed it in one of my examles), that you
> can use even for limited types.  (Only for limited types?  Hopefully an
> ARG member will jump in here and, er, elaborate.)

You were right the first time; any function can use the extended return
statement. Only limited types have a guarantee of building the result in
place, but compilers can do that for any object when they can arrange it.

The *other* big improvement in Ada 200Y is the
generic_dispatching_constructor I mentioned earlier, since it lets you
create objects of a *type* determined at runtime (not just a *subtype*). Ada
95 has that in the predefined T'Class'Input streaming function, but there
was no way for the user to write their own. That allows you to avoid giant
case statements that include every type in the program; instead you can use
a registration scheme so that adding a type to the program is as easy as
withing the package for the new type.

                               Randy.