Re: Why Ada is not the Commercial Lang of Choice

[abo@minkirri.apana.org.au (Donovan Baarda)]

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997 02:40:50 GMT, Don Harrison <donh@syd.csa.com.au> wrote:
>Dale Stanbrough wrote:
>
>:We shouldn't of course forget the option of using underscores in numeric
>:literals, which to my continual amazement, no other language that i know of
>:has!
>
>Well, you can stop being amazed because Eiffel allows them. :)  
>
>However, they differ in that digits must be grouped in threes. Grouping in 
>threes is an arbitrary choice and, IMO, too restrictive. For example, it makes 
>no sense for base 2 literals. OTOH, I think Ada's free placement is too liberal 
>because it allows different groupings within the same literal.
>
>Something in between is probably optimal - like allowing any grouping but with
>the restriction that it must be consistent within a literal.
>
Nahh, why limit things? Arbitary placement of underscores is handy when
you want to define an integer literal bit-field where bits are clustered
on arbitary boundarys.

From a compiler implementation point of view, enforcing underscore
placement limitations is more hassle than not enforcing them.

ABO