Re: Ada Pointer Problem

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

skidmarks wrote:

> In 1988 I had a
> little design problem that I wanted to solve with a pointer. I looked,
> and looked, and looked all over the LRM and Ada as a Second Language
> (by Cohen) for a pointer. After four hours I found 'Access Type'. It
> took four hours to solve a four minute problem. I think because of Ada
> snobishnes (we can do better than you can and can do it without using
> your keywords or terminology).

The word "pointer" is clearly there in ARM83 3.8 ("Access Types") and in 
the index. If it took you 4 hrs to find it, I don't think we can blame 
the ARM or Ada.

The terminology is not snobbishness but precision. The language 
definition should not unnecessarily constrain implementations. An access 
value may not necessarily be just a pointer; it may contain bounds 
information if it designates an unconstrained array type, for example, 
and there are such implementations.

There was also a design principle that shorter names were preferable: 
"task" instead of "thread" or "process", "access" instead of "pointer".

Finally, "is access X" reads better than "is pointer X".

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Death awaits you all, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
20