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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Victor Porton Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Functions vs constants Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:55:57 +0300 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: rFX7cZOSaeuGGZI2vwQTaQ.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: KNode/4.12.4 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:21108 Date: 2014-07-22T00:55:57+03:00 List-Id: 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