Re: Clause "with and use"

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:51:51 -0500, "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG"
> <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote:
> 
>>I agree with this whole-heartedly for anything more than
>>a simple "hello world" program. This keeps the name
>>clashes to a minimum, and it prevents unintended
>>references to functions/procedures in the wrong package.
>>There may be some exceptions to this, but these should be
>>kept to a bare minimum, IMHO.
> 
> Does anybody a statistics of name clashes in Ada?

I don't have statistics to offer, but here is one that
I regularly run into (and there are others like this
one):

USE ADA.STRINGS;

If this is done in the wrong place (like at the top), then
then the names Left and Right come into conflict (ie.
Ada.Strings.Left). Left and Right are perfectly acceptable
names to use in programming.

 >What percent is caused by the language design problems:
...
 >I have a feeling that hatred towards "use" is largely caused by
 >outside reasons like A. and B.

I think we have to remember that USE is primarily a language
construct for convenience. It is strictly unnecessary for
writing a program successfully. It only saves the program
writer (and reader) from having to specify (or read) the entire
hierarchical name.

Misuse that convenience, and you'll experience problems.
Conclusion: there is nothing wrong with the language
feature, but only the application thereof. ;-)

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg