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From: Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Functions vs constants
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:25:05 +0300
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Date: 2014-07-24T15:25:05+03:00
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Robert A Duff wrote:

> Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> writes:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Those are equivalent in a pure functional language.  Not in Ada.
> 
> E.g. a constant initialized to "new T" always denotes the same heap
> object, whereas a function that says "return new T" returns a new
> object every time it's called.

You've misunderstood me.

I don't say that every function should be equivalent to a constant, but just 
that every constant should be equivalent to a function.

A function that says "return new T" is not equivalent to a constant.

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