Re: Two ideas for the next Ada standard

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Laurent said, answering Bob Duff:

"Bob> [...] Private parts are primarily an efficiency hack. [...]

   I agree that this is true for Ada 83, but in Ada 95 a child unit
gains visibility (in their private part and body) to the declarations
in the private part of their parent, and this is an important semantic
feature, no longer only an efficiency hack."


Laurent, I think you are confused. The "hack" that Bob is referring to
is the fact that the private part is part of the spec, or more precisely
that the clients of the package have a dependency on the private part (since
as I pointed out previously, it is perfectly fine to put the private part
in the same file as the body). 

Obviously a child package with visibility to the private part MUST have
a dependency on the private part, so that is not an issue.

Really there are two slightly annoying things here

1. The fact that clients have a dependence on the private part
2. The fact that private parts do not have a separate with list