Re: Ada to 'C' parameter passing problem

[rod.chapman@praxis-cs.co.uk (Rod Chapman)]

mheaney@on2.com (Matthew Heaney) wrote in message news:> That Ada doesn't allow you to specify inout mode for function
> parameters is a deficiency of Ada...

Wow!  This reflects somewhat of a gulf between our respective
views of language design!  (Don't get me wrong, neither position
is necessarily right or wrong, just different...)

At the SPARK end of the spectrum functions calls are expressions
which return a value and never have a side-effect.  Procedure
calls are statements which have side-effects - A rather
significant _semantic_ difference!

If you do prefer the ability to allow a function to modify its
parameters, then it should at least be good enough to confess
this to the outside-world as part of its specifiction.  The current
discussion for Ada0Y in AI231 (extending anonymous access
parameters) is welcome here, especially from a static-analysis
point of view.

 - Rod