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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Warning: Religious naming convention discussion :-) [was: assign
 help!!]
Date: 1997/05/11
Message-ID: <dewar.863365392@merv>#1/1
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References: <5kjvcv$evt@news.cis.nctu.edu.tw> <5kn8ko$jcc@top.mitre.org>
 <1997May7.201035.2439@nosc.mil> <33727EEA.2092@sprintmail.com>
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Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


John G. Volan wrote:

> But once again, I'd want the rule to be simple and minimalistic: Just
> always mark access types (and access objects) with "_Pointer".

Bad suggestion. Access types are NOT pointers. They may be implemented using
pointers some of the time (but not all the time -- we often find people
using GNAT being surprised to find that access types are not always
represented using simple pointers in some cases, but of course there is
nothing in the language that suggests or requires that access types be
implemented using pointers).

Suffixing access types with _Pointer emphasizes the confusion, and seems
inappropriate to me. It is analogous to saying that all integer types
should be suffixed with

  _Twos_Complement_Bit_String

or somesuch. Names should be chosen to emphasize the meaning at an
appropriate level of abstraction, not the low-level implementation
dependent representation.