Re: Specialization of generics

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

On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Ehud Lamm wrote:
> > Right. For me the easiest is to just have two generics (one for each
> > "specilization").
> > ---
> > T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
> 
> 
> Yap, that's what I'd do.
> What I really miss is being able to overload generic units. For example,
> imagine a package that can work on any non-limited type, but has a more
> efficient version ("specialization") is the type is ordered (i.e, has an "<"
> operator). The client code "simply" instantiates the unit, getting the
> appropriate version automagically.

OK, I tried to sit on my hands, but I can't resist. Along these lines, you
can look at 

http://www.acm.org/pubs/citations/proceedings/ada/126551/p338-shen/#indterms

which is not exactly what you're talking about but would provide some 
similar capabilities. I'd have really liked something like this in Ada.
Who knows, maybe SPARK will evolve into a new language with parametric
polymorphism. 

-- Brian