From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!JUN8/iIzeA71QWaIWFKODA.user.gioia.aioe.org.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Luke A. Guest" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Lower bounds of Strings Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2021 12:24:44 +0000 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <1cc09f04-98f2-4ef3-ac84-9a9ca5aa3fd5n@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: JUN8/iIzeA71QWaIWFKODA.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.6.0 Content-Language: en-GB X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:61038 List-Id: On 05/01/2021 11:04, Stephen Davies wrote: > > I'm sure this must have been discussed before, but the issue doesn't > seem to have been resolved and I think it makes Ada code look ugly and > frankly reflects poorly on the language. Wrong. It highlights how poor programmers are, especially from other languages which love to hard code numbers. > I'm referring to the fact that any subprogram with a String > parameter, e.g. Expiration_Date, has to use something like > Expiration_Date (Expiration_Date'First .. Expiration_Date'First + 1) > to refer to the first two characters rather than simply saying > Expiration_Date (1..2). What if the length changes? By using a constant, say it was 'Last being used, if that last changes, the program won't crash. Luke.