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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9fb64e4c58f1fe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: guerby@gnat.com (Laurent Guerby) Subject: Re: overload ":=" ??? Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169562354 sender: guerby@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu references: <4soh73$56h@newsbf02.news.aol.com> organization: New York University reply-to: guerby@gnat.com newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 , Team Ada. "Use the Source, Luke. The Source will be with you, always (GPL)."