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From: "John B. Matthews" <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: prefix of dereference must be a name?
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:46:23 -0400
Organization: The Wasteland
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Date: 2009-08-03T13:46:23-04:00
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In article 
<dfef89b8-7821-4852-bff7-9dac1bafa2a8@t11g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
 Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> wrote:

> On Jul 30, 12:35 pm, "John B. Matthews" <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > Interesting. The compiler was happy with a function call:
> >
> > A.all := "+"(C, B).all;
> >
> > but a use_type_clause didn't seem to help.
> 
> Right, because (C + B).all just doesn't fit into the syntax.  USE TYPE
> makes certain functions visible that wouldn't otherwise be directly
> visible, but it doesn't change the syntax rules.  (If "+" weren't
> visible at all, then you'd get an error with
> 
>    "+"(C,B).all
> 
> but it wouldn't be a syntax error; the error would be that the
> compiler didn't know what "+" meant.  This could be hypothetically
> fixed with something like
> 
>    Some_Package."+"(C, B).all
> 
> USE TYPE can also fix that problem by making "+" directly visible,
> i.e. visible without needing a package name.  But it still can't make
> illegal syntax illegal.)

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks. The problem wasn't visibility; it was 
legality. Yannick's reference to the definition of names was 
dispositive:

<http://www.adaic.com/standards/05rm/html/RM-4-1.html>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>