Re: Lambda expressions? LINQ?

[Brad Moore <brad.moore@shaw.ca>]

Martin wrote:
> On Sep 19, 3:33 am, "Steve D" <nospam_steve...@comcast.net> wrote:
> [snip]
>> As Martin guessed it is one statement spread over a few lines.
>>
>>             string[] names = xDoc.Descendants("Layer0Message")
>>                               .SelectMany(node =>
>> node.Attribute("To").Value.Split(' ',',').Where( st => st.Length > 0 ))
>>                                   .Distinct().OrderBy(n=>n).ToArray();
>>
>> Oh, and by the way.  LINQ isn't just for XML.  You can do queries on arrays,
 >> lists, etc.  For example if you have an array of records you can do a
 >> query to select all of the records with a field that has a particular
 >> value. It's cool.
>> I just wish my favoriate language had this feature.
> 
> Me too - although I can't see how it could be :-(

I'm not sure I see why this couldn't be.
At first glance, the code fragment looks a lot like Ada.

If existing packages (such as XML/Ada see 
(http://libre.adacore.com/libre/tools/xmlada/) do not already
have this capability, then why couldn't someone write such a package in 
Ada? I don't see the language being a barrier here.
Ada.Containers.Vectors for example lets you query an array of records to
select all the records with a field that has a particular value.

What is missing?

Brad