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=-1.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,PLING_QUERY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,aba9ec8a75fce75a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-06-12 01:59:55 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-east.nntpserver.com!nntpserver.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!dca1-feed2.news.algx.net!dca1-feed1.news.algx.net!allegiance!dca1-nnrp1.news.algx.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: kst@king.cts.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: simple question?! (choice of the name "access type") References: From: Keith Thompson Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 08:58:35 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.68.192.180 X-Complaints-To: abuse@algx.net X-Trace: dca1-nnrp1.news.algx.net 1055408315 209.68.192.180 (Thu, 12 Jun 2003 04:58:35 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 04:58:35 EDT Organization: Allegiance Internet - Greenbelt, MD Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:39037 Date: 2003-06-12T08:58:35+00:00 List-Id: Robert A Duff writes: [...] > But Ada is descended from Pascal, and you can't do pointer arithmetic in > Pascal, either. Yet Pascal calls them "pointers". > > I think it was silly and obfuscatory for Ada to call them "access > types". [...] I agree. I remember the first time I read the Ada Reference Manual (actually it was a copy of the 1979 preliminary manual from SIGPLAN Notices). I had a lot of trouble figuring out what the section on access types was talking about until I realized they were essentially the same thing as pointers. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> Schroedinger does Shakespeare: "To be *and* not to be"