Re: Mariner 1 / FORTRAN bug

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

On 19-08-09 09:28 , J-P. Rosen wrote:
> Le 09/08/2019 à 03:57, robin.vowels@gmail.com a écrit :
>>> While it probably didn't cause the failure of a space probe, people
>>> did get bitten by this language design flaw, which is an example of a
>>> single-character error (added, omitted, or changed) that results in valid
>>> code.
>> Single-character errors are still possible, whatever the language.
>>
> Of course, you can type "-" instead of "+" in any language.
>
> But outside of mathematical formulas, can you give an example of
> single-character error in Ada?

I once declared a record type that contained a component, aptly (I 
thought) called Address, of type System.Address.

Then, in a certain statement dealing with a record object R of that 
type, I mistakenly wrote

    R'Address

when I meant

    R.Address

Silly me.

I now have a personal coding rule: never use the name Address for a 
record component of type System.Address. Perhaps this should be expanded 
to forbid using any record-attribute name as a component name; for 
example, Size.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
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