Re: Hiding the value of Constants

["Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

On 7 juil, 17:51, Adam Beneschan <a...@irvine.com> wrote:
> I believe the reason enumeration literals are actually functions is so
> that you can use the same enumeration literal in more than one
> enumeration type and not have to worry about name conflicts.
I believe the same

> There are additional bonuses, such as being able to use an
> enumeration literal as the actual for a generic instantiation that
> expects a function.  How useful that is in practice, I don't know.
I do not see right away neither, but I don't minde, as it is clear
cristal and as there is nothing of a kind of hack in there.

> I'm not sure why you would want enumeration literals to be treated
> like constants, though.
My words were probably clumsy, beceause I was to suggest the
opposite : treat constants like enumeration literals are.

This would not break any actual code, as actual restrictions on
constants are narrower than the restrictions on enumeration literals.

> If you mean that you'd like
> constants to be treated like static functions, so that you can
> overload them:
>
>     Max : constant Integer := 15;
>     Max : constant Float := 15.0;

That was this one idea, yes :)

> that's an intriguing idea.  Not intriguing enough for me to have to
> make all the necessary changes to our compiler, but intriguing
> nonetheless....
Oops... I apologize, as I'm not a compiler writer (just played with a
tiny-little language of my own, some years ago), I cannot figure out
the amount of difficulty this would involve.