Re: Mixing operators and dot notation

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@TheWorld.com>]

"Alejandro R. Mosteo" <alejandro@mosteo.com> writes:

> I'm trying to abuse Ada syntax for nefarious purposes and have arrived
                ^^^^^ Probably an apt description.  ;-)

> at something that looks inconsistent to me, but I fail to see if it is
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yes, the rules are inconsistent.

> expected behavior or a bug. This is a self-contained example which is
> below.

>    Op (1, 2).Method;  --  Fine
>
>    --  (1 & 2).Method;  --  Error: statement expected

That's syntactically illegal; take a look at the BNF.

But you can say:

   Nest.Object'Class'(1 & 2).Method;

Ada makes a syntactic distinction between 'name' and 'expression',
which I think is unwise.  ARG has been chipping away at it over
the years.  Anyway, nowadays, a qualified_expression is a name,
so if you have an expression you want to use as a name, you can
just qualify it.

- Bob