Re: What would you like in Ada202X?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message 
news:wccipgihd99.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
...
> I'm not sure what you mean.  I'm suggesting (and, I think, Randy was) a
> rule where everything is overloadable, and if you have two things called
> X, neither hides the other.  This is the way use-visibility work in Ada,
> but only for subprograms.  Single namespace.

For Ada, I wasn't suggesting any change in hiding rules (even subprograms 
can be hidden in Ada, after all). I was just suggesting that objects are 
overloadable by their profile, which would be the same as a parameterless 
function returning the type of the object. I think changing the hiding rules 
would have to be incompatible, I think just adding some overloading would 
not be incompatible (but since Steve Baird never analyzed it, I could be 
wrong :-). That's because I didn't plan on any change in visibility for 
things with the *right* profile, so if the program is currently legal, it 
would remain legal (either other declarations have the wrong profile or 
remain hidden). What would change is that programs which are currently 
illegal (because of use-clause cancelation) would become legal if exactly 
one of the candidates matched.

In any case, this idea would take some careful analysis, and its main 
purpose was to make "integrated packages" more possible -- which I'm not 
sure is ever really going to matter.

                                                         Randy.