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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,efe381d5ed2da234 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!a6202946!not-for-mail From: Jeffrey Carter Organization: jrcarter commercial-at acm [period | full stop] org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Pointer Problem References: <7KadnU33z-bmpsLcRVn-og@megapath.net> <35f054ea.0410060743.7b73aac3@posting.google.com> In-Reply-To: <35f054ea.0410060743.7b73aac3@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 18:19:32 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.184.104.239 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net 1097086772 63.184.104.239 (Wed, 06 Oct 2004 11:19:32 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 11:19:32 PDT Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4824 Date: 2004-10-06T18:19:32+00:00 List-Id: 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