From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)
Subject: Re: General Access-To-Constant Parameters
Date: 1997/09/24
Date: 1997-09-24T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <mheaney-ya023680002409972223130001@news.ni.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 34282934.3249@gsc.gte.com
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In article <34282934.3249@gsc.gte.com>, brian.holmes@gsc.gte.com wrote:
>Why doesn�t the Ada95 language support general access-to-constant
>parameters?
This question was answered by Tucker Taft; I got the quote below from DejaNews.
>>Subject: Re: Two ideas for the next Ada Standard
>>From: stt@henning.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)
>>Date: 1996/09/06
>>Message-Id: <DxBMIy.EG.0.-s@inmet.camb.inmet.com>
>>Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
>>[More Headers]
>>
>>Jonas Nygren (ehsjony@ehs.ericsson.se) wrote:
>>: ...
>>: If we could have written:
>>
>>: procedure P1 (Obj : access constant T);
>>
>>: We could then call P1(Obj). Everything would then have been
>>: symmetrical and beautiful (again in my eyes).
>>
>>: And I can't see that it would have been too difficult to implement
>>: in a compiler.
>>
>>: ... I believe for e.g. that Ada would benefit by the 'access const'
>>: construct. ...
>>
>>So do I. This was just a boo-boo. There were some subtle reasons
>>why we left this out, but in retrospect, they seem far too subtle
>>to have won the day. There was enormous pressure to leave out
>>"marginal" changes, and sometimes, this pressure created some
>>strange incentives. I think many people today would agree that
>>allowing "access constant" in a parameter would be a simplification
>>rather than an added complication in the language.
>>
>>Luckily (and in my biased opinion), this is one of the few cases
>>where we really goofed. I would agree that "access constant" parameters
>>should be one of the first minor updates to be considered.
[snip]
>>-Tucker Taft stt@inmet.com http://www.inmet.com/~stt/
>>Intermetrics, Inc. Cambridge, MA USA
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Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
<mailto:matthew_heaney@acm.org>
(818) 985-1271
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Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1997-09-23 0:00 General Access-To-Constant Parameters Brian G. Holmes
1997-09-24 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney [this message]
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