Re: advice on package design

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

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:

> On 17 Mar 2005 09:04:26 -0500, Robert A Duff wrote:
> 
> > "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:
> 
> >> I agree with the idea, but I think that hiding should appear in a
> >> declarative part. Less probably it should also qualify the thing being
> >> hidden (like renames does):
> > 
> > I don't believe in declarative parts.  I think declare/begin/end
> > should not be required just because I want to declare a constant
> > or something.
> 
> Disagree. I don't like the idea of something changing its meaning within
> the same scope, even if that is non-existing -> exiting. I have to tolerate
> this in a declarative region because probably there is no better way to do
> it. But I don't want to let it leak out of the quarantine zone.

I don't understand what you mean about "changing meaning".
I just want to be able to write things like:

    for I in A'Range loop
        This_Component: constant T := A(I);
        ... several uses of This_Component
    end loop;

without adding three extra (useless) lines of code.
And we agreed that if there's another thing called This_Component,
this This_Component should not hide that This_Component.

The "hide" command I proposed is of dubious value, but if it were
allowed, I wouldn't mind restricting it to whole procedures
or something.  Or not.  But either way, I don't like the separation
of "declarations" and "statements".

- Bob