Re: Reprise: 'in out' parameters for functions

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"okellogg" <okellogg@freenet.de> wrote in message
news:1105542923.381339.189580@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
...
> This triggers a different question:
>
> With Ada2005's support for object-dot-operation notation, will it be
> possible to write the following?
>
> package test is
> type obj_t is tagged private;
> function f (self : access obj_t) return integer;
> -- need 'access' mode here because f modifies self
> private
> -- ...
> end test;
>
> with test;
> procedure main is
> object : test.obj_t;
> retval : integer;
> begin
> retval := object.f;
> end main;
>
>
> My point here is whether main.object need be declared aliased or not.
> I would much prefer if it needn't be.

I agree with you, but I lost that discussion. It was felt that it was
important that this notation was just syntactic sugar, and didn't have any
effect on semantics.

I would have prefered that "aliased" be not required for tagged objects at
all, given that they are always by reference anyway (and you can always take
'access of them once they're passed as a parameter), so there isn't much
point to the declaration. But some people thought that "aliased" was useful
for readers. I didn't press the point...

                            Randy.