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: a07f3367d7,16f39b4f57339dcb
X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet
X-Google-NewGroupId: yes
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII
Path: 
 g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!npeer03.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!nx01.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!198.186.194.249.MISMATCH!news-out.readnews.com!transit3.readnews.com!panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail
From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Constant as anonymous functions : the outer space beast is back
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:22:20 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Message-ID: <wccvde9audf.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com>
References: 
 <3c43bf9d-75f1-4d09-9388-65b83cafb1d9@j14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
 <wccy6jkz46l.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com> <hk06bk$k8u$1@munin.nbi.dk>
 <aa6fc1b7-3a39-4510-9181-f294a0d60943@o28g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>
 <454c900f-85ed-4a40-ad13-a5b432261b99@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: pcls6.std.com 1265559729 3368 192.74.137.71 (7 Feb 2010 16:22:09 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 16:22:09 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: Gnus/5.1008 (Gnus v5.10.8) Emacs/21.3 (irix)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:tZq4cSxJr/5IJwPe9MfumJfv5OE=
Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8953
Date: 2010-02-07T11:22:20-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"Hibou57 (Yannick Duch�ne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> If it's not good for constants, so why should it be good for
> functions ?

You're right -- it would make sense to allow overloading for constants.
In fact, it would make sense to allow overloading for everything.
But you'd want to make the resolution rules weak, so that anything
that is likely to be confusing to programmers would be ambiguous and
therefore illegal.

Ada's resolution rules are too strong as it is.  For example:

    F(...).all := X;

I find it odd that the type of X is used to resolve which
F you're calling.

Another point: implicit hiding is evil.  It causes Beaujolais-like
effects.  Ada 95 makes it worse, because of child packages -- the
hiding can cross library unit boundaries.  Subunits already had
similar problems in Ada 83, but subunits are less useful, and
therefore rarer, than child packages.

- Bob