Re: Small question concerning use

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <19130ae.0110151428.65937d5b@posting.google.com>, Eric Merritt
says...
>I am fairly new to Ada, though I already love the language, and I have
>a small question concerning the 'use' keyword. Many books and quite a
>few postings to this group say not to use it at all, even the style
>guide is fairly adamant about avoiding it. Yet, in many packages I see
>it used frequently. Is there a set standard for when to use it and
>when not to use it? I would just as soon not use it at all except some
>packages names get really (really) long. Ok, lets say you don't use

That is a *very* contraversial issue here. My advice is to do without it if you
are new to Ada, because if nothing else it forces you to pay attention to where
everything is comming from. Once you are much more proficient you will be
capable of making an intelligent decision on when/if it is OK to use.

>it, is it then acceptable to use 'rename ' to shorten long package
>names. Which is the more acceptable?

On that I'd say "no". Its not so bad on projects where there is a standard
agreed-upon documented set of "abbreviations". But it is sheer hell trying to
read code where someone renamed all sorts of stuff.

I'd say you should stick with full dot notation until you get your feet fully
under you. After you get used to it, you may find that things like
Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_Unbounded_String aren't really all that bad.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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