Re: overload ":=" ???

[guerby@gnat.com (Laurent Guerby)]

Bob> I agree with David here.  The problem is not how much you have to
Bob> type.  The problem is extra verbosity for the person READING the
Bob> code.  Extra verbosity is good if and only if it adds useful
Bob> information for the reader of the program.  

   Well, I guess it depends on what background you have on Ada (;-),
when I read in an Ada source.

X := "sdfsfg";

   I know that X is a fixed string (or wide_string). When I read:

X := To_X ("sgsgs");

   I know that a change in representation is on the way (may be X
isn't a fixed string after all), and it's not extra verbosity.

Bob> Here, we have a
Bob> character-string data type, and yet we can't directly use string
Bob> literals (or indexing, slicing, etc), just because it doesn't
Bob> happen to be the built in sort of string.  (The built-in string
Bob> types are no good, because they aren't dynamic enough for this
Bob> application.)

   This "sort of string" is built in Ada 95 under the name
Bounded_String.

Bob> The To_Text conversion is just extra junk -- there is no
Bob> "conversion" going on at the conceptual level.

   "conversion" at the conceptual level is pretty vague. What about

X : Float := 1; -- What, that's illegal? 
-- Why should add ".0"? At the conceptual level there's no need for it.

Y : Integer := "32"; -- grr...

Z : String := 'A'; -- ...

   If you allow programmers to play with assignment, you'll definitly
damage the readability of all Ada sources.

-- 
Laurent Guerby <guerby@gnat.com>, Team Ada.
   "Use the Source, Luke. The Source will be with you, always (GPL)."