From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-01 18:29:41 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? Date: 1 Oct 2003 18:29:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <1064527575.648809@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F739C1D.4030907@attbi.com> <3F78E850.8010401@comcast.net> <3F797748.3000203@noplace.com> <3F7AC1B4.304@noplace.com> <3F7B0FE2.6010906@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.33.245.52 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1065058181 30186 127.0.0.1 (2 Oct 2003 01:29:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 01:29:41 +0000 (UTC) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:90 Date: 2003-10-01T18:29:40-07:00 List-Id: Robert I. Eachus wrote: > ... > So I never understand all those complaints about explicitly converting > to and from Bounded_String (or Unbounded_String). (Let's speak about Unbounded_Strings, for clarity). There are 2 main reasons for those complaints: 1) types Unbounded_String and String appear unrelated, while they are conceptually related for all natural purposes. (If you want specifically a fixed-size array of characters which is not assumed to be a textual line in the application then say "array of Character", and not "String"). 2) there is no literals in Ada for Unbounded_Strings which contradicts the natural concept of a textual line of varying (unlimited) size. [From all my experience in (non-corporate) application programming I must say that while this seemingly tiny and unimportant point remains unresolved, Ada never will be more popular among programmers than she is now. And if this point will be resolved with some satifactory way then Ada's popularity will increase (well, certainly not by magnitude, but quite noticeably) almost immediately. Well, I'm not sure that it is a good goal to make Ada more popular; therefore I can admit that preserving status quo here may be actually a proper decision.] Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia