From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 109fba,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 115aec,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: f43e6,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid109fba,gid115aec,gidf43e6,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsread.com!newsprint.newsread.com!news-feed01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net!nntp.frontiernet.net!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newshosting.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!oleane.net!oleane!freenix!proxad.net!proxad.net!194.117.148.138.MISMATCH!pe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk!blueyonder!news-peer-test!news-peer0-test!btnet-feed5!btnet!news.btopenworld.com!not-for-mail From: Martin Dowie Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.realtime,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 20:34:58 +0000 (UTC) Organization: BT Openworld Message-ID: References: <4229bad9$0$1019$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au> <1110032222.447846.167060@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <871xau9nlh.fsf@insalien.org> <3SjWd.103128$Vf.3969241@news000.worldonline.dk> <87r7iu85lf.fsf@insalien.org> <1110052142.832650@athnrd02> <1110284070.410136.205090@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> <395uqaF5rhu2mU1@individual.net> <1111607633.301232.62490@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: host81-154-188-69.range81-154.btcentralplus.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: titan.btinternet.com 1111610098 5607 81.154.188.69 (23 Mar 2005 20:34:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news-complaints@lists.btinternet.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 20:34:58 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <1111607633.301232.62490@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> X-Accept-Language: en-us, en User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9827 comp.lang.c++:46900 comp.realtime:1629 comp.software-eng:5231 Date: 2005-03-23T20:34:58+00:00 List-Id: Jerry Coffin wrote: > Just for one obvious example, Ada doesn't provide an easy way to > express/do most of the things one can do with the C or C++ > preprocessor. It provides some alternative in _some_ cases, but quite > frankly, these are really the exceptions rather than the rule. That 'problem' isn't unique to Ada - I can't think of another language that *does* define a pre-processor. And if you like a preprocessor - just use one! You can always write a makefile/.bat/.com/ to invoke the preprocessor before the compiler is called. GNAT comes with an Ada-centric preprocessor but there is nothing to stop you using the 'C' one. > Ada's exception handling is also primitive at best (exceptionally so, > if you'll pardon a pun). In particular, in Ada what you throw is > essentially an enumaration -- a name that the compiler can match up > with the same name in a handler, but nothing more. See Ada.Exceptions - perhaps not as elegant but it does the job and back when the first exception mechanism for Ada was designed, I doubt there was much call for anything other than a 'this fault has occured' style exception. At the time, I'd guess that 90%+ of all code in exsistance was COBOL, C or FORTRAN - none of which had any exception handling! > Only exact matches > are supported and no information is included beyond the identity of > the exception. True for Ada83 but not so in Ada95 - again see Ada.Exceptions and getting expanded again in Ada2005. > And, once > again, the addition of tagged records to Ada 95 testifies to the fact > that even its own designers recognized the improvement this adds in > general, but (whether due to shortsightedness, concerns for backward > compatibility or whatever) didn't allow this improvement to be applied > in this situation. Almost certainly backwards compatibility - but I'm sure Bob and/or Randy could shed more light on that... Cheers -- Martin