Re: Lack of formal syntax undermines Ada

[John McCabe <john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk.nospam>]

usenet@leapheap.co.uk wrote:

>Ada does not have a formal syntax. The LRM provides "syntax rules"
>section by section, then collectively in Annex P. The resulting
>woolly grammar is well-known to be ambiguous (e.g. is X:=Y(Z) an
>assignment from a function call, array indexing or something
>else?). 

As I understand it, that was deliberate; Ada's feature that functions
may not have side-effects means that whether Y is a function or an
array is irrelevant to the user as long as the result is valid. It is
also related to the separation of interface from implementation. Write
the implementation as an array to start with, e.g. for unit test
purposes, then it can be replaced with a function without having to
change the client who uses this interface.