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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: Tue, 31 May 2022 10:54:46 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Ada needs some modernization
From: Matt Borchers <mattborchers@gmail.com>
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List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Throughout my career, I often find myself writing code similar to:

if (A and B) or else (not A and C) then...

and I always wished there was a better and clearer way to write this in Ada=
.  Then along came if expressions.  But, if expressions don't help that muc=
h with readablity although it is arguably simpler:

if (if A then B else C) then...

What amendment can we suggest to the Ada syntax so the if expression be bet=
ter written when used in an if statement?  I know other languages support t=
his and it often looks like  A ? B : C  or something similar.  That's certa=
inly not Ada-like IMO, but I can't think of something better. These same la=
nguages often also have a null check operator  A ?? B  (where A and B are a=
ccess types of the the same Type) such that if A is not null then A is retu=
rned otherwise B is returned.  So useful and helpful!

-----

Again, I often find myself writing a loop to search for something and then =
performing one or another action depending on the success of the search.  T=
his almost always requires some externally defined variable, like:

--assuming arr'First is not Integer'First
found :=3D arr'First - 1;
for i in arr'Range loop
    if arr(i) =3D match then
        found :=3D i;
        exit;
    end if;
end loop;
if found in arr'Range then
    --do something A
else
    --do something else B
end if;

Of course I could more the "do something A" into the if block within the lo=
op, but I still need to know if I must run the alternate code afterward.  I=
t would be nice to avoid having to create a variable just to indicate the s=
uccess state or indexing location found.  Maybe something like:

for i in arr'Range loop
    if arr(i) =3D match then
        --do something A
        exit;
    end if;
then
    --do something else B
end loop;

The "then" part only executes after the loop terminates normally, i.e. only=
 when the loop does NOT exit early by "exit" or "return" statement.

I think syntax enhancements like these could go a long way to making Ada fe=
el like it is at least keeping up with modern languages and I think current=
 programmers expect "ease-of-use" syntax from today's languages.  Other con=
temporary modernized languages have taken ideas from Ada, but Ada has not c=
ontinued to pioneer ideas as quickly.  Perhaps that's by choice or design.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Matt