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: 103376,7f4d16c4ee371eb5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: Why is it Called a Package? Date: 2000/04/07 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 608029496 References: <38DF7F38.8D656ABD@lmtas.lmco.com> <38DFB0BC.9FF72EFC@callnetuk.com> <87u2hq857e.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <38E2A4A4.E59E997C@research.canon.com.au> <8ckfsp$ab8$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 955121352 216 bpr@206.184.139.136 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-04-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert, the context of Bob Duff's message was the discussion of a new Ada variant without the constraint of backward compatibility. I was certainly not proposing revisiting Ada's syntax! I'm surprised that you read it that way. Perhaps I should have called it Bab or something else :-) Given the character set restrictions, wasn't the issue of "[]" pretty much a foregone conclusion? Yes, uder defined overloadings of [] is a semantic issue, but I wouldn't think it a good idea if () were used for functions and arrays. I don't like C++'s "()" overloading, only the "[]" one. -- Brian On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Robert Dewar wrote: > In article > , > Brian Rogoff wrote: > > > I think if the syntax were to be redone I'd like the issue of > "()" versus > > "[]" for array indexing to be reexamined. Then we could also > think about > > some syntactic sugar for overloading "[]" as in C++. The > restrictions on > > the character set that were part of the original Ada > requirements don't > > make a lot of sense to me now, though the restriction to ASCII > is OK. > > > There is no point in revisiting this, because nothing has > changed since Ada 95. The reason for not differentiating > [] vs () has to do with referential transparency (i.e. > arrays are conceptually like functions) not with character > set restrictions. > > Yes, there are arguments on both sides. > > Yes, these arguments are well known since 1960 > > Yes, these arguments were brought up during the Ada design > > No, they did not convince people that [] is a good idea > > No, nothing has changed that would suggest revisiting this issue > > The question of overloading indexing is of course a completely > separate one, since this is not a matter of syntax but > semantics, and is thus completely orthogonal. > > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ > Before you buy. >