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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: a new language, designed for safety !
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 16:57:21 -0400
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Date: 2014-06-13T16:57:21-04:00
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"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:

> 1. From the language design POV, everything possible must be moved out the
> language into the library. If Ada were a better language, array could be a
> library container. If Ada were a worse language containers must have been
> implemented at the language level.

I agree.  In Eiffel, "array" doesn't have any special built-in
syntax/semantics.  It's just something declared in the predefined
library.  In general, putting functionality in the predefined
library greatly simplifies a language.

But I think what Simon wants is convenient syntax for dealing with
associative arrays, and that's reasonable.  But in a better language,
that wouldn't require associative arrays to be built in.

By the way, I don't much like the term "associative array".  To me,
"array" implies random access (i.e. roughly constant-time component
access).  I'd prefer "map" or "mapping", where "array" is a kind of
mapping, and "hashed map" is another kind.

> Range should have been a proper type. A'Range should have been a primitive
> array interface operation.

Yes, that's another example of the same language design principle.
There ought to be a way to write procedure Do_Something, such that

    Do_Something(Some_Array'Range);

makes sense.  Except it might as well be 

    Do_Something(Some_Array.Range);

or perhaps

    Do_Something(Range(Some_Array));

- Bob