Re: Generic procedures and their parameters

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> We considered that, too, and decided not to do it because it because it
> doesn't work well in Ada. "<" is usually Intrinsic, and Intrinsic things
> cannot be passed as access-to-subprogram parameters. So you'd have to
> explicitly build a wrapper function, with all of the possibilities for error
> that that exposes. Generic instantiations don't have that limitation (as
> they are are considered more heavyweight than a simple 'Access).

Kludgery begets more kludgery.  Surely you should be allowed to pass
things like "<" as a parameter!  Proof: see Randy's comment above.
Making wrappers should be the compiler's job.

Viewing downward closure as access values is overly implementation
oriented.  The "not null access" on the declaration, and the 'Access on
all calls, are just noise.

- Bob