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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada.Strings.Unbounded vs Ada.Containers.Indefinite_Holders
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 19:15:55 -0500
Organization: JSA Research & Innovation
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Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:48300
Date: 2017-10-02T19:15:55-05:00
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"Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> wrote in message 
news:oq58qb$o3s$1@dont-email.me...
> On 09/23/2017 10:09 AM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> On 2017-09-23 00:15, Victor Porton wrote:
>>>
>>> In my opinion, it would be better to change RM phrasing from "null 
>>> string"
>>> to "empty string", because in some other languages (notably C) NULL 
>>> means
>>> something other. It is just confusing.
....
> It's called overloading. Many of these cases refer to things that can have 
> components and mean one with zero components: a null record has no 
> components, a null array has no components ('Length = 0), a null string 
> literal has no characters, a null set has no members, ... It should not be 
> confusing.

And it also shows the amount of change needed to actually make such a change 
to the RM. It would be a lot of change for (at most) not much value, so it 
wouldn't be a very good use of scarce resources.

                              Randy.