Re: Ada2005

["Mark Lundquist" <mlundquist2@attbi.com>]

"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:rwNR7.59129$xS6.96048@www.newsranger.com...
> In article <o8NR7.13079$7y.147028@rwcrnsc54>, Mark Lundquist says...
> >
> >No... you can do this
> >
> >in Foo.h:
> >
> >    class Foo {
> >        static int i;
> >        .
> >        .
> >
> >in Foo.C (typically):
> >
> >    int Foo::i = something;
>
> Perhaps that might be marginally better for *some* purposes than doing the
same
> thing with a deferred constant in Ada. If you like the fact that the value
is
> hidden away in the body, you can get the exact same effect with an inlined
> function if you really want to.
>

No, you misunderstand me... I'm not saying anything is better in C++ or that
anything would be better if it were different in Ada.  It sounded like you
didn't know about static class members, and were saying that static data
members were a workaround (to get the effect of a classwide constant).  You
said something about the stoopidity of having each instance carry around its
own copy of a constant, and said (I thought) that the only reason to do that
would be because C++ doesn't have anywhere else (like a package) to put
it... but they do.

> >I think what the OP means is something like a const data member in C++.
If
> >so, he should learn about discriminants.
>
> Ahhh. I thought the issue was class-wide constants. Either way though, you
can
> do this just fine in Ada today.
>

True of course.  My point was just that you can also do that in C++ (you
seemed to be denying this).

> >> Perhaps there should be a revision in there to include a version of
> >> Get_Line implemented as a function.
> >
> >...such as GNAT's Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Text_IO.Get_Line.  I think it
would
> >be great if that were added to the standard in a language revision.
>
> Yes; basicly that, but returning "String" instead of
> "Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Unbounded_String". Just toss it into Ada.Text_IO
and be
> done with the whole issue.
>

There you go.  Although I think in practice it wouldn't find as much use as
the unbounded version.  You usually don't do just one Get_Line... :-).

I would guess that GNAT didn't provide this for fixed Strings just because
it's useful only in a special case, and using unbounded strings in that case
is not all that much less convenient than fixed.

Best,
-- mark