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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: scripting/extension language for Ada (we have an opportunity
 here)
Date: 2000/02/16
Message-ID: <wccya8lc9xs.fsf@world.std.com>#1/1
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Sender: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
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Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-02-16T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"Samuel T. Harris" <samuel_t_harris@Raytheon.com> writes:

> Certainly I can. Since [] and {} are not legal Ada tokens,
> they many only appear in comments and string literals.
> A syntax to handle these so that other [] and {}
> are converted to () is trivial to do.

No, I don't think it's trivial to do it right.

Consider:

procedure Main is
    function F return String is
    begin
        return "A";
    end F;
    
    procedure Nested is
        function F(X: Integer) return Character is
        begin
            return 'B';
        end F;
    begin
        Text_IO.Put(F[1]); -- Not Ada.
    end Nested;
begin
    Nested;
end Main;

Presumably the F[1] above resolves to the outer F, which returns an
array, so the program prints "A".  If you "trivially" transform "[...]"
into "(...)" you will get an illegal (ambiguous) Ada program.

- Bob