Re: Beginning Ada Programming, by Andrew T. Shvets (2020)

[Jere <jhb.chat@gmail.com>]

On Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 5:54:49 PM UTC-4, cantani...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 12:59:38 PM UTC-5, Jere wrote:
> > Actually it does work on low level arrays in C++.  It doesn't work 
> > on pointers to array elements however, which people often confuse
> > with arrays (that's how people most often pass them to functions, 
> > but there are other methods).
> 
> I didn't realize C++ had progressed to tracking how long a low-level array is, but in retrospect it's come along so much in terms of what you can do at compile-time that I should have tested before commenting. Thank you.
> 
> regards
> john perry

C++ has always been able to track array size at compile time (the
sizeof() operator worked correctly even back int he day as long
as you used it on the array and not a pointer).  Somewhere since
c++11 (or maybe more recent) they added the auto looping and included
low level arrays with it.  The big problem remains however, is you 
cannot technically pass an array to a function as a bare parameter.
If you pass it to a function as a pointer, it loses the length, 
which then kills the auto looping mechanism.  There are ways around
this, but generally C++ prefers that you use containers rather than
raw arrays or pointers (similar to how Ada prefers containers over
access types).  So low level arrays still do have severe limitations
even with the auto looping available.  Hope that helps!