From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,57f8540942f8e060 X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Initialization and Finalization of limited object "returned" by a function Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:09:52 -0500 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <41b794ec-26b0-485e-a959-580a5b877a3b@f15g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> <8e09c20d-172e-42a2-b2ff-994863893523@h12g2000yql.googlegroups.com> <9c2b5c56-7abf-4523-844d-b48447587402@w27g2000pre.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls6.std.com 1266001779 27800 192.74.137.71 (12 Feb 2010 19:09:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:09:39 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.1008 (Gnus v5.10.8) Emacs/21.3 (irix) Cancel-Lock: sha1:KWJx9WGDC2QvdByhZ6J06pvzHG0= Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9182 Date: 2010-02-12T14:09:52-05:00 List-Id: Adam Beneschan writes: > I also remember some of the attempted rationalizations at the time; in > particular, why did Ada use parentheses for both subprogram calls and > array indexing, when other popular languages (Pascal and C) used > square brackets for indexing. Someone came up with an argument that > it was actually a good thing to use the same characters for both, > because then if your program uses Arr(Index), where Arr is an array, > you could redesign your program to make "Arr" a function and the > change would be transparent. That seemed like a stretch at the time. Well, this one makes a little more sense than the aggregate thing. But it doesn't work if you say "Arr(Index) := ..."! I have mixed feelings. - Bob