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From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hibou57_=28Yannick_Duch=EAne=29?=
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Hiding the value of Constants
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 09:26:49 -0700 (PDT)
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Date: 2009-07-07T09:26:49-07:00
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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. =A0How 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:
>
> =A0 =A0 Max : constant Integer :=3D 15;
> =A0 =A0 Max : constant Float :=3D 15.0;

That was this one idea, yes :)

> that's an intriguing idea. =A0Not 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.