From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, PP_MIME_FAKE_ASCII_TEXT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 103376,fa7bb11bafaa51ed X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney) Subject: Re: General Access-To-Constant Parameters Date: 1997/09/24 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 275419806 References: <34282934.3249@gsc.gte.com> Organization: Estormza Software Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-09-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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: >>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 This is some dummy text necessary because my newsreader won't allow me to post more quote lines than new text. Please ignore. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Heaney Software Development Consultant (818) 985-1271