Re: += in ada

[Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com>]

Russ wrote:

>Preben Randhol <randhol+valid_for_reply_from_news@pvv.org> wrote in message news:<slrnbo7afh.1rc.randhol+valid_for_reply_from_news@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no>...
>> On 2003-10-07, Russ <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote:
>> > Repeat after me: Augmented assignment is available and WIDELY USED in
>> > C, C++, Java, Perl, and Python, perhaps the 5 most popular
>> > general-purpose programming languages ever designed. Is it *possible*
>> > that 98% of the programmers out there might know *something* that Ada
>> > programmers don't?
>> 
>> So what? A billion Chinese speak Chinese...
>
>Does 98% of the world population speak Chinese?

Well, *much* less than 98% of the world population are programmers,
I'd say. :)

>course not. Only C and C++ have it. My point was that all five of
>those languages -- the most popular general-purpose languages in
>current use -- *all* have augmented assignment.

Inhouse we have a term for that: "Historical reason". ;)

That means "dirty, little thing that's just there and nobody wants to
touch it, because if you'd do, it'll surely break some time".

>And I get tired of people who assume that I want augmented assignment
>operators in Ada only because they are in C/C++.

Well, if at all, I would like to have the idem approach like it was
discussed long before here in c.l.a.:

|A_Complex_Left_Hand_Side := <idem> + 1;

instead of (your) proposed

|A_Complex_Left_Hand_Side :+= 1;

IMO, the latter *is* too confusing, no matter how the operator would
exactly look like.

It would give you all you want and would even include the plus of
being more versatile, because one could use it more than once in a
line.

A perhaps second argument is: it wouldn't clutter up the code too
much, because probably no one would try to write

|i := <idem> + Another_Variable;

instead of

|i := i + Another_Variable;

in this simple case, but surely a lot of people would use

|i :+= Another_Variable;

because it might be easier/faster to write. So this could be sort of
self-regulating. :)


Vinzent.