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From: Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: += in ada
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:57:46 +0200
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Russ wrote:

>Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com> wrote in message =
news:<bmjk73$niepa$1@ID-175126.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>> Hyman Rosen wrote:
>
>> >Even in COBOL you could say "ADD A TO B."
>>=20
>> You can already do it in Ada, too:
>>=20
>> |Add (A, To =3D> B);
>
>When I see stuff like this, it offends my sense of elegance in
>numerical programming.

Well, I answered to a COBOL snippet, not to FORTRAN. :)

>"If you have to ask, you don't get it." And I say, if you think "Add
>(A, To =3D> B)" is as clean and clear as "B :+ A", you don't get it.

Of course. :) I'll never understand why someone should write "B :+ A"
instead of a more mathematical way "B :=3D <idem> + A"[0] or even the
plain "B :=3D B + A".

There's no need turning procedures into functions.


Vinzent.

[0] Yes, I would support such an approach. Not that I really needed
it, but in case of complex expressions for the left hand side it might
be useful indeed.