Re: Functions vs constants

[Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru>]

Victor Porton wrote:

> Isn't the following a mis-design of Ada?
> 
> Constants in a good programming language should be equivalent to argument-
> less functions which return these constants.
> 
> However, in Ada functions can be overloaded by their return type, while
> constants cannot.
> 
> Mad idea, but I propose it: Make in a future specification of Ada
> constants overloadable (moreover, make constants argument-less functions).
> (However I am not sure how this could affect reliability. But should we
> think about it at all? After all function overloading was not ruled out
> with the same requirements, and ruling this out as possibly unreliable
> would be a half- measure.)
> 
> I wrote this post after a practical problem whether I should use a String
> constant or a function returning String to return the library version
> (related with a C library for which I am writing bindings). There are no
> definite answer to this question. It is in any case of wrong design.

And this would be useful for writing (reliable) programs in practice:

PI: constant Float := ...;
PI: constant Long_Float := ...;

-- 
Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org