Thanks for the responses to my posting on this subject. My proposal was intended as the start of a dialogue on this subject, not as fodder for comparing the virtues of one progamming language against those of another. I certainly am not calling for immediate action but for recognition that pre-, post, and invariant assertions may have a place in designing with Ada. Except for the gratuitous put-downs, �especially to those who do not have experience in language design,� and �Eiffel envy� the comments have been interesting and well-considered. That said, there is little benefit in any of us comparing Eiffel to Ada in this dialogue. My original note on this subject concerned how the pre-condition, post-condition and invariant would benefit Ada. I probably should have avoided all mention of Eiffel since such mention inevitably foments language comparisons. I did say that I like the words �require,� �ensure,� and �invariant.� as they are used in Eiffel. But that does not imply we should make Ada more like Eiffel. Instead, it means there might be some benefit in further examination of this feature to enhance Ada�s existing support for �programming by contract.� I understand that there would need to be some discussion in the Ada community before we could come to an agreement on what each assertion means. The addition of pragma Assert to GNAT is a good start in the right direction. Perhaps this would be a good topic for some kind of Working Group. I hesitate to make explicit proposals for the behavior of the pre-, post-, and invariant pragmas in this posting. I do have some ideas, of course. In fact, in a one-on-one discussion with Robert Dewar at Ada Europe, he agreed that some of the ideas has merit. Mostly, I am interested in whether, without comparing Ada to other languages, Ada could benefit from this feature. I believe it could. I already know there are those with reasons why it cannot work. Now I would like to see the comments from those with reasons why it could. Richard Riehle AdaWorks Suite 30 2555 Park Blvd Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 328-1815 richard@adaworks.com -- richard@adaworks.com AdaWorks Software Engineering Suite 30 2555 Park Boulevard Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 328-1815 FAX 328-1112