Re: renaming Interfaces.Java.Ada_To_Java_String to the + operator

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

Nick Roberts says

<<To use this spot to answer Robert Dewar also (ever conscious of bandwidth,
signal to noise ratios etc.), Robert argues that the use of explicit
conversions or not depends on the level of abstraction, which I
wholeheartedly agree with.  He then says that in cases where the level of
abstraction does not suit an explicit conversion, use of the unary +
operator approximates to an implicit conversion (which Ada does not support
generally).  Well, true, it's nearer than a great long identifier and
brackets; but it's still not an implicit conversion, and it's appearance
will (probably) worry a programmer who doesn't already know what it means,
whereas the explicit identifier (probably) won't.
>>

Indeed the use of the "+" notation assumes that programmers are familiar
with this idiom. It is an old one which was well understood at the time of
the original design, and I would have thought it was pretty universally
known. Certainly it is something that all Ada programmers should be familiar
with. Even if you don't like to use it yourself, you are highly likely to
run into code that does use this convention.

I certainly agree that the use of idioms like this is often quite dependent
on familiarity. 

Of course in this particular case, it seems to me that a programmer
who was unfamiliar with this notation would quickly find out what was
going on. You encounter the operator +, and in the normal manner, seek
out its definition (using whatever special tools ytou have to help with
this). Then the spec of this "+" will of course have comments explaining
the use.

Anyway, it is clear that one benefit of this thread is that at least the
current readers of CLA are now familiar with this very standard idiom,
whether or not they choose to use it themselves :-)