Re: Inheritance and Polymorphism in Ada !!

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:

> I like the extra level of indentation, it shows clearly the
> scope of the variables that are introduced.

Well, I suppose this is a matter of taste, to some extent.

But why do you dislike this:

    for I in Some_String'Range loop
        X: Character renames Some_String(I); -- Not legal Ada.
        X := To_Lower(X);
        ... maybe other uses of X ...
    end loop;

?

It seems clear enough (to me) that the scope of X is the body of the
loop.  There's *already* a level of indentation indicating that fact, so
why do you like to have an *extra* one?

Another example: I often want to add a statement at the beginning of a
procedure.  I want it to happen before anything else.  Maybe a debugging
print-out, for example.  Or maybe some sort of checking on the input
parameters, like an assertion.  If I put it after the "begin", I will
miss all the elaborations.  So I have to surround the whole procedure
with a block statement, and *then* add my new statement.  I wouldn't
mind adding the verbosity if it helped the reader, but I think it does
just the opposite.

- Bob
-- 
Change robert to bob to get my real email address.  Sorry.