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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Package's private parts and protected types
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:39:19 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2010-02-08T15:39:19-05:00
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Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> writes:

> Robert A Duff a �crit :
>> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:
>
>> What were they thinking?!  The "task type T is..." syntax
>> is so obviously broken.  The protected syntax just copied
>> that mistake, so it's not a mistake by itself.
>> 
> That it is nice to have singletons that are clearly singletons, with a
> syntax close to the syntax for types.

Why on earth would you want an object decl to look like
a type decl?

The syntax for a variable decl is:

    X : T;

If we want to use an anonymous array type, we say:

    X : array (...) of ...; -- unclearly a singleton?  Hmm...

So clearly the syntax for singleton tasks should be:

    My_Task : task ... -- seems clear to me

rather than:

    task My_Task is ...

And why are singletons allowed for some types but not others?
If they make sense for arrays, tasks, and protected objects,
then they make sense for records, etc.

Sorry, but I stand by my opinion that this area is a mess!
It's not hugely important, though.
I guess I just value uniformity more than JDI.

Note that syntactic uniformity makes the RM smaller, partly because
of fewer syntax rules, but more importantly because
non-syntax rules need to refer to syntactic categories by name.

- Bob