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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? [although this thread changed
 to something else a long time ago]
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:59:10 -0500
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Date: 2003-09-26T14:59:10-05:00
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"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:uwubvie8a.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
> What about
>
>    lwienfowowoenfnowoqnd += 1
>
> and
>
>    lwienfowowoenfnowoqnd := 1
>
> How many chances there is to misread one for another in a real-world
> application ?

Exactly. An important part of Ada is that its syntax was designed (as much
as possible) to make one character errors generate something illegal. For
most constructs, it takes several characters of change to create something
else legal. This is definitely not true of C-family syntax. And this is the
root of Ada's philosphy, that small changes do not change the meaning of a
program, they simply make it illegal.

(Yes, Ada does allow arithmetic operators, for the obvious reason that it
would have too weird to say "Add" instead of "+". And it certainly is clear
that you can't get rid of all one character errors, at least as long as you
allow numbers. But that doesn't eliminate the basic point.)

                    Randy.