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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: parameterless generics?
Date: 1996/07/12
Message-ID: <dewar.837149427@schonberg>#1/1
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references: <4s48k9$3be$1@mhafn.production.compuserve.com>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-07-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Brian said

"Does anybody have a reason to use a generic (package or
subprogram) without a parameter?  The language (Ada 83 at least)
seems to allow it, but everytime the generic is instantiated it
would produce an identical copy.  Comments?
"

Such generics are often very useful, and very common in Ada code. You
missed one critical point. Each instantiation gets its own set of
package level variables.

For example a random number generic could read

generic
function random return float;

and each instance would have a separate seed