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From: milod@netcom.com (John DiCamillo)
Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the ....
Date: 1996/02/21
Message-ID: <milodDn4y3q.Kz4@netcom.com>#1/1
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Date: 1996-02-21T00:00:00+00:00
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Ray Toal <rtoal@eecs.lmu.edu> writes:

>  2.  Had C++ had namespaces BEFORE classes, there would not have
>      been the need for both prefix and postfix operations.

That's quite an assumption.

>      At least Smalltalk is ALL POSTFIX and Ada is ALL PREFIX.

That's not quite true:
        I := X'SIZE;

Looks like "POSTFIX" to me.  (and syntactically hideous to
boot: overloading a "grouping" token as a separator token
--yech!)

>      The Ada 95
>      designers are to commended for resisting the urge to introduce
>      postfix message passing syntax, which I have heard some people
>      wish they had.  Having both prefix and postfix is really
>      annoying to read - is the distinction between member function
>      and global function really that big of a deal to make
>      syntactically? I think not.

Well, member functions and global functions *are* different,
semantically (in general; I don't know the semantics of member
functions in Ada95.  For a type theoretic treatment, see for
example Abadi and Cardelli 1994 and 1995:
http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Luca_Cardelli/Papers.html)

Whether a language chooses to highlight the semantic difference
in syntax is another matter.  Most OO languages have chosen a
distinguished argument syntax, but not all.  I find it interesting
that you feel that "x.y(z)" is "annoying"...

>Sorry I seemed to go off topic....

This seems to imply that there was a topic.

>Ray Toal


-- 
    ciao,
    milo
================================================================
    John DiCamillo                         Fiery the Angels Fell 
    milod@netcom.com       Deep thunder rode around their shores