RE: The old "Object.Method" syntax debate

[Lionel.DRAGHI@fr.thalesgroup.com]

| -----Message d'origine-----
| De: Steve [mailto:nospam_steved94@attbi.com]
...
| 
| If only we could add an alternate syntax for defining the 
| methods (functions
| and procedures) associated with an object, such as:
| 
|   type obj is tagged
|     record
|       field : Integer;
|       function Fun1( in; value : in integer ) return Integer;
|       procedure Proc1( in out; value : in out integer );
|     end record;
| 
| Yeah, I've mentioned this before, and nobody seems to agree 
| with me, but I
| still hate dealing with "freezing rules" to figure out where 
| dispatching
| operations end.

I agree with you, Steve, you're no more alone :-) 
Some construction to clearly bound object limits would be good for
readability.

The former suffer from an already raised point here, which is that the
declared profile is not the used profile, and this is not so good for
readability.

Note also that this is not strictly related to the "Object.Method" debate,
as one could consider using your declaration syntax with the current:
Proc1 (Obj, Value, integer);
while forbidding:
Obj.Proc1 (Value, integer);

...
| 
| This is one of the very few places I like C++ and Java syntax 
| better than Ada.
I unfortunatly agree. 
Sticking to Ada 83 syntax as much as possible was a really good goal, but
due to for example to freeze rules, i am not sure that a more different
syntax would have been more difficult to implement within compiler. 

Lionel Draghi.