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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: float with 24-bit resolution
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 22:46:45 -0500
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Date: 2003-09-04T22:46:45-05:00
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"Jean-Pierre Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message
news:6u27jb.6e.ln@skymaster...
>
> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> a �crit dans le message de
news:vld62odqnfei2d@corp.supernews.com...
> > > Matthew Heaney <matthewjheaney@earthlink.net> writes:
> > >
> > > >    Null_Object : T := null;
> > >
> > > > I find the latter convention confusing, because it suggests that if
> > > > the initialization part were omitted, then the object wouldn't be
> > > > initialized.  But that would be incorrect.
> >
> > *I* find
> >      Null_Object : T;
> > confusing. A maintenance programmer probably doesn't know the class of
> > object that T represents,
>
> I understand that concern, but it vanishes with reasonable identifiers:
>
> Null_Object : String_Pointer;
>
> OK for you?

Not really, unless your organization has very strong naming conventions. (We
don't; I tried to enforce some naming conventions with Claw, but that was
only partially successful.)

Certainly, I have some "virtual pointer" types that are really integers or
private types, and these need to be initialized. (Even if a private type is
implemented as an access type, you still ought to explicitly initialize it,
because otherwise you're depending on the private definition, which may
change.)

If Ada had a way to specify a default value for a (sub)type, I would be
happy to omit the initializer. (Or if flow shows that it is certain to be
initialized.) But, given the current language, that is often not a good
idea.

                         Randy.