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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ideas for Ada 200X
Date: 29 May 2003 14:49:11 -0400
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Date: 2003-05-29T14:49:11-04:00
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Wesley Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> writes:

> > Well, I like the idea of an increment operation, and my reasoning has
> > nothing to do with typing.  The problem is code duplication: you have to
> > write "I" twice in "I := I + 1;".  No big deal if it's just "I", but it
> > could be a complicated name, so the reader has to careful compare the
> > text, and also worry about whether the name has side effects.
> 
> What kind of entity is able to have side-effects AND to be incremented?

I'm thinking of something like:

Some_Array[Get_Next_Position] := Some_Array[Get_Next_Position] + 1;

where Get_Next_Position is a function that increments the current
position and returns it.  You can say "so don't do that", but it's
allowed in Ada, and when I read the code, I have to think about whether
this sort of thing is going on.

- Bob