Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor

["Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

Robert I. Eachus wrote:

> I don't know if you consider SQL, XML, and HTML as a programming 
> languages,
Well, 3 different answers for them:

1) HTML is not a programming language, and any attempt to make it
a programming language is fundamentally wrong;

2) SQL is controversial thing. Personally I don't see it as a programming
language, on similar ground as for RPG. Both are too fixed on purpose (this
and goal-orientation are different things).

3) about XML I'm still not sure. From its popular presentation it does not
seem a programming language; but SAX somehow changes the picture. Probably
the decisive feature is DTD, but it is not clear (at least for me) *what*
is (or may be) programmed within a DTD, and to which limits.

> 2) There is no need for a STANDARD Ada pre-processor, because most of 
> the need for that sort of thing in Ada is better done in Ada.  I'd 
> rather spend my efforts in the standards area on making Ada a 99% 
> solution instead of a 90% solution.
Ok, but there is one thing, which was mentioned by many in this thread (and
perhaps by you also): the need to have multiple bodies for a package and
to choose between them according to particular configuration. This need
certainly does not require preprocessor, but perhaps it will be good to
add some standard language construct for that - which communicates to a
compiler the fact that the body of particular package must be picked from
non-standard place. Nothing more than that - all other information (compiler
option formats etc.) need not and cannot be standardized. Something like

  pragma Remote_Body;

>From other side, I wonder, why - if something like this is really needed -
it was not already added to existing compilers as an implementation-defined
feature. Or it was?



Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia