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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:50:43 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2007-02-09T07:50:43-05:00
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Maciej Sobczak <no.spam@no.spam.com> writes:

> The ideal solution is called "constructor", everything else is just
> patchwork. Returning limited types is a compromise that can be
> satisfying in most cases - that's why it's good that Ada 2005 provides
> at least this feature.

I presume by "constructor", you mean the C++ style feature, right?

Why is that superior to just using functions as constructors?
Ada has:

    type T(<>) is ...

to indicate that clients MUST call some constructor function when
creating objects.  And it now allows constructor functions (and
aggregates) for limited types.

I'm talking about Ada 2005, of course.  I agree that limited types were
rather painful in Ada 95.

- Bob