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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.31.165.212 with SMTP id o203mr870443vke.38.1504678541944; Tue, 05 Sep 2017 23:15:41 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.36.57.78 with SMTP id l75mr256568ita.1.1504678541791; Tue, 05 Sep 2017 23:15:41 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!209.85.216.215.MISMATCH!q8no65139qtb.0!news-out.google.com!c139ni55itb.0!nntp.google.com!k189no149833itk.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2017 23:15:41 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4dc188de-802b-41ad-9cdd-b8246eb9a1c7@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=76.113.16.86; posting-account=lJ3JNwoAAAAQfH3VV9vttJLkThaxtTfC NNTP-Posting-Host: 76.113.16.86 References: <4dc188de-802b-41ad-9cdd-b8246eb9a1c7@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Community Input for the Maintenance and Revision of the Ada Programming Language From: Shark8 Injection-Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2017 06:15:41 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:47947 Date: 2017-09-05T23:15:41-07:00 List-Id: On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 5:49:15 PM UTC-6, far...@gmail.com wrote: >=20 > Oddly missing from Ada, and commented about on this list before, is why b= rackets [ ] aren't used for array indexing. This is highly suggestive of th= e mathematical notation for vector and matrices and would improve readabili= ty and remove the confusion of what is an array and what is a function. There are basically two reason why square-brackets aren't used for indexing= : the first is that when Ada was being developed there were a not-insignifi= cant chunk of computers that lacked it in their native character-sets, and = the second was to make array-indexing and function-invocation interface the= same. Ex: Is "Data(Item)" a function-call, or is it indexing into an array? Answer: Yes. (Indexing into an array is the same as a function: mapping t= he inputs [indices] to outputs.) >=20 > Also missing is multidimensional array slicing. This really needs to be a= dded to remove errors of users' attempts to do something similar using ad h= oc methods. This is true; I /think/ the reason that Ada doesn't do this has to do with = implementation-difficulty *AND* how mapping an array to memory might work.