Re: Elaboration order handling (Was: Bug in 'gnatmake')

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Friday, June 21, 2013 11:35:28 AM UTC-7, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> On 06/21/2013 08:48 AM, Adam Beneschan wrote:

> None of those are places the language could require a null statement, so I think 
> you're comparing apples to oranges.
> 
> (By "statement", I mean something with a terminator semicolon that I count as a 
> statement when counting statements, which includes declarations. By "null 
> statement" I mean a statement identical to Ada's null statement, even if it's a 
> declaration.

All you said was "I like the idea that something that's empty has to have something special in it to show that it's deliberately empty."  You didn't say that that applied only to things ending in a semicolon.  Don't blame me for "comparing apples to oranges" when all you said was "fruit".


> So, yes, the language could require a null statement in a  
> declarative part.)

Well, it could have, prior to Ada 2005.  That's no longer possible, because of null procedures.


> It appears that the language designers considered declarative regions to be  
> different enough from executable regions to require null statements in the 
> latter and not the former, and most people go along with that without really 
> thinking about it. I thought about it and don't see a significant distinction. 

Then why do you want a separate declarative part at all?  Many popular languages these days don't separate the two, and let you put declarations anywhere you can put a code statement, or even in the middle of another statement.  So if you don't see a significant distinction, why not be consistent?

                          -- Adam