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,f28dd1d63a9466b2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-03-16 07:22:06 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!news.ti.com!news.dseg.ti.com!amber.dseg.ti.com!fjm From: fjm@ti.com (Fred J. McCall) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Syntax question Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:19:00 Organization: Texas Instruments, Inc. Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <3jt25s$dim@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <3k7t8o$4pt@hacgate2.hac.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: amber.dseg.ti.com X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A] Date: 1995-03-16T09:19:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <3k7t8o$4pt@hacgate2.hac.com> dkusu@atc-1s.hac.com (David Kusuda) writes: >In article dim@felix.seas.gwu.edu, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: >[snip] >>The named association is very convenient in teaching about parameters, >>and makes for nice readable code (IMHO, of course), but in general is >>really "syntactic sugar." >I agree with Michael's points regarding named parameter association. But the named >parameter association is also necessary to: > a) Specify the parameter list in an arbitrary order--I think this is a weak point > as far as readability/maintainability, but still a point. I don't know that I agree here. Sometimes things 'read' better from the caller point of view if you can reorder the parameters. > b) Omit parameters which have default values. I think that this is very useful, > too bad C++ doesn't have the same thing. I quite agree. The other thing I wish C++ would 'borrow' from Ada is the whole idea of rep specs. There are applications where it is definitely handy to be able to specify exactly how many bits an object should occupy and just how its components should be laid out.