Re: "Must instantiate controlled types at library level." Why?

["Xenos" <dont.spam.me@spamhate.com>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:c82vhe$ecp$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> Xenos <dont.spam.me@spamhate.com> wrote:
> :
> : Wrong.  C++ has a string class in its standard library.  Its a lot more
> : versitile than Ada's String type.
>
> It would be more fair I think if you compared
> Standard.Strings.Unbounded
> to
> std::string
>
> C++ minus the STL, if I may put it this way, has no Ada-like or STL-like
> arrays after all. (But it does have an STL.)
I'll give you that one, though I don't think its fair to weigh a language
without considering its library.  The C++ philosophy (and I won't argue its
correctness) is to put anything that can be in the library in there and not
in the language.  Though admittedly I was probably guilt of the same
comparing std::string to String.

>
>
> :> Also you use pointers because C/C++ has no "out" or "in out". Ada
however
> :> decides itself if call by value or call by reference is needed. So no
> :> pointers needed here as well.
> : Wrong.  C++ has reference types are equivalent to "in out."  Constant
> : reference types may be used for "in."
>
> My understanding of Martin's comment is that you can have an Ada
> compiler decide whether it thinks that pass by reference is better,
> thus you only need to specify the mode, not the passing mechanism.
> Is there a similar allowance for C++ compilers?
The comment I argued against stated that in C++ you *had* to use pointers
because the language *didn't* have anything like "in out" which is simply
untrue.  In C++, pointers are almost as unnecessary as they are in Ada.  I
won't argue whether it is better for the compiler to decide when to use pass
by reference.


>
>
> -- Georg