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From: stefan-lucks@see-the.signature
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada.Strings.Bounded
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 18:34:54 +0200
Organization: Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar
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Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20868
Date: 2008-04-07T18:34:54+02:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

> > The only useful use for "+" in Ada is for conversions.
> 
> OK, so that's not much of a use.  On the other hand, the idea that "+"
> represents the identity function is ingrained enough in me that I've
> resisted using it for a conversion operator even though others around
> me have been doing that.  Call it an obstinate adherence to
> meaningless purity or whatever.  But like Randy, I would have
> preferred adding one (maybe even two) operator symbols that would have
> no meaning except that the user could define them, although I'm not
> sure about "#" since that already has a use (in based numeric
> literals).  I'd prefer something not currently used at all, like "@"
> or "!" or tilde.  Of course, it apparently isn't going to happen
> anyway so there's not much point arguing about which character would
> be best.

Two natural candidates which come into my mind would be an unary '&' and 
the '%'-sign:

  '%' (percent) indicates some kind of conversion anyway (though usually 
      in postfix notation, not as a prefix, "75 %" for 75/100). 

  '&' is something you can even now use for conversion into strings and 
      the like:
        declare an appropriate function 
            function "&" (X: String; Y: Some_Type) return String;
        and then just write 
	    "" & A;
        wherever you need A being converted into a string. 
      A unary "&" would be handy -- prepending the empty string clearly is 
      artificial. 

So long

Stefan

-- 
------ Stefan Lucks   --  Bauhaus-University Weimar  --   Germany  ------
               Stefan dot Lucks at uni minus weimar dot de
------  I  love  the  taste  of  Cryptanalysis  in  the  morning!  ------