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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Why is it Called a Package?
Date: 2000/03/29
Message-ID: <wcc4s9pr8o6.fsf@world.std.com>#1/1
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Sender: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
References: <38DF7F38.8D656ABD@lmtas.lmco.com>
 <38DFB0BC.9FF72EFC@callnetuk.com> <wcc3dpcnkcd.fsf@world.std.com>
 <87u2hq857e.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> writes:

> 
> Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> writes:
> 
> > FWIW, I don't like ".all" -- I prefer Pascal's "^".
> 
> A missing or a surplus dereference operation can make a huge
> difference, and sometimes, both variants are legal Ada code.  So it's
> probably better to have a clear mark for this, and "^" is perhaps too
> easily overlooked.

But in Ada, dereferences are *optional* in most contexts!  And all
programmers leave them out when optional, because ".all" is so big and
ugly and non-intuitive.  My point was that I agree with you that
dereferences make a huge difference, and so should be explicit.
Mumble^.Next is plenty explicit for me.

>...  Personally, I prefer U+2191 (UPWARDS ARROW) to
> ".all", but the former would involve a quite radical change. ;)

Well, the "^" of Pascal originally *was* an up arrow.

- Bob