RE: status of Ada STL?

["Steven Deller" <deller@smsail.com>]

One more voice for some notation that shows the result of an assignment
is the same as the first item in the expression.  This is NOT a "do it
like C" or "do it like Icon" vote, but an "express what I mean in a
readable fashion" vote.

+:=   -:=   *:=   /:=   
would be fine

Since we have the ":" to work with, we could also put the operation on
the proper side of the start of the assignment.  How about 
:+   :-   :*   :/

That keeps the syntactical look-ahead to two symbols and also, once you
get used to it, seems (to me) to be more readable than either the C or
Icon notation, where the operator seems to be misplaced.

x :+ 1 ; -- x is x with one added
y :- 1 ; -- y is y with one subtracted
z :/ 2 ; -- z is z divided by 2
a :* (z+2)/3 ; -- y is y multiplied by (z+2)/3

Anyway, this one particular syntax changes does seem to have numerous
people in favor of it as a way of SIMPLIFYING the expression of a
program. (I personally DON'T care about the "temporararies" argument).

Why isn't this a valid Ada 0X proposal?

I also agree about the record notation of
   type X is record ...
   end record ;
being the subject of continual error, both in writing and in reading.

I guess the argument is that "end record" is parallel in concept to "end
if", but "record" occurs in a declaration, not a statement.  As a
result, "end X" always seems more reasonable to me, being parallel to
"package X is ... end X".  

When reading code, it is much more difficult to match up "record" with
the right "is record ..." than it would be to match "end X" with the one
and only "type X".

Why can't Ada 0X include "end X" and even "end record X" as alternatives
to "end record".  

The syntactical burden on compilers would seem to be small, and the
improved readability would be in keeping with the intentions of Ada.
(Plus there would be a lot less recompiles by me simply because I have
to change "end X" back to "end record" every time I define a record :-)
).

Regards,
Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org 
> [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org] On Behalf Of Frank J. Lhota
> Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 12:13 PM
> To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> Subject: Re: status of Ada STL?
> ...
> I think that the Icon augmented assignment operators would be 
> a worthwhile addition to Ada, not so much for optimizations 
> but for readability. A smart compiler could probably optimize
> 
>     Whatchama_Callit.Thingy( Here ).Do_Hickey.Count := 
> Whatchama_Callit.Thingy( Here ).Do_Hickey.Count  + 1;