Re: Why is it Called a Package?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Robert A Duff wrote:
> Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> writes:
> 
> > 
> > On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Robert A Duff wrote:
> > > Geoff Bull <geoff@research.canon.com.au> writes:
> > > 
> > > > Isn't it a little bit late to be arguing about this?
> > > [notation for ".all"]
> > 
> > So, your preference would be to replace ".all" by "^" and make
> > explicit dereferencing mandatory? 
> 
> I'm saying that if I were to design a language from scratch, that's what
> I'd do.  Or, equivalently, that's what I wish the original designers of
> Ada 83 had done.  I am certainly not advocating any change to Ada, Ada
> 0X, Ada 1X, or whatever.

Oh, neither was I. I thought it was clear from your post that you were
talking about designing a new, Ada like language, from scratch, given 
the decades of experience with Ada and some other languages. 

I don't advocate any non-backwards-compatible change in Ada. Apparently
that was not clear from my post, so let me make it crystal clear now. I 
even said that I thought typed exceptions would be nice but "too late". 
Thankfully, Tucker Taft corrected me and thought I was being too
conservative with possible changes. Too bad downward and anonymous funargs
weren't included in that list with typed exceptions :-).

> > I think if the syntax were to be redone I'd like the issue of "()" versus 
> > "[]" for array indexing to be reexamined.
> 
> I don't think the syntax of Ada is going to be redone at this point; nor
> should it.  We've discussed () vs [] here before, and I somewhat agree
> with you, but there are arguments both ways, and anyway I don't think it
> makes sense to change things.

Right, but lets say we're talking about a new language, related to Ada in 
the way that Sather is related to Eiffel or Modula-3 is related to
Modula-2 and Oberon. 

I actually find that the overuse of "()" makes code less readable, as I 
look at blocks of Ada I want arrays and functions to look different. 
The two really aren't equivalent, since you can't pass functions as
arguments and return them as results, at least not in a low level
language like Ada.

Someone once posted that this equivalence was useful to them in a real
program but I've never been so fortunate. 

> By the way, the () vs [] debate for array indexing has good arguments on
> both sides, but what about aggregates?  It's really a shame that you
> can't write a zero-element or one-element positional aggregate in Ada,
> and the reason has to do with silly character-set issues.

I agree with you here. 

-- Brian