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From: Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: enumeration type
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 17:18:40 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2004-09-27T17:18:40+00:00
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Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:

 [qualification]

: It is a valid point, but is not applicable for non-composite types.

>From a technical point of view, yes, you needn't always qualify
literals, sure. From a stylistic point of view, a redundant
qualification might turn out to be a useful reminder, at least when
the near context isn't providing enough information.

Similarly, named parameters can be very helpful. Not only to provide
more information about the desired associations to the compiler,
but also to remind the reader which Insert parameter is the key,
and which is the value in an Integer -> Integer mapping.

Notice how the context for understanding the parameter associations
n this case is far away in the declaration of the library procedure
Insert.

Where is the threshold for "not enough context nearby"?
The psychologists seem to say that between 3 and 7 items
can be stacked by an average person. Would this be guidance
in determining when there are so many "programming constructs"
between two pieces of program text to that the second piece
should be qualified? 


-- Georg