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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Assertions (an heretic view)
Date: 1996/06/28
Message-ID: <dewar.835972566@schonberg>#1/1
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references: <JSA.96Jun18142249@organon.com>    <dewar.835121649@schonberg>
    <dewar.835306677@schonberg>    <4ql1fv$5ss@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
    <DtI7n4.Brz@world.std.com> <gauthier-2806961227410001@164.81.60.62>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-06-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


One thing for sure, this discussion on assertions certainly nicely
indicates the problem. People have very different ideas of what
assertions should be, and this kind of divergence does not make
it easy to agree on a single language feature. Some people argue
for multiple language features to respond to the confusion, but
that of course is also a controversial position.

Anyway, readers of this thread should now have a better appreciation of
why the apparently simple and obvious feature did not make it into the
official language. 

My own taste would have been to define a simple feature similar to that
implemented in GNAT, but as you see from the discussion, there is no
consensus that this is the "right" approach, and the discussion in 
WG9 was quite similar to that in this thread.