Re: Possible Ada deficiency?

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

"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:wccwtun9481.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
...
> So I guess the Ada 83 designers invented the private part so the
> compiler wouldn't have to look at the body to generate efficient code.
> But the compiler has to look at the body anyway, in order to implement
> generics (unless they are always code-shared) and pragmas Inline.
> So the decision seems somewhat inconsistent to me.

I viewed the intent of the Ada 83 design to be exactly that: no looking at
the body is required. Generics should be shared, inline is a hint and the
dependencies need not (and should not) be used. Do any inlining/macro
expansion at link-time. Certainly I wasn't the only one who thought that was
the intent. Machines of the era weren't really powerful enough to implement
that intent, thus the hacks of the generic dependency and the inline
dependency were allowed.

Of course, Ada 95 came along and changed that intent. Which is too bad, as
machines now are powerful enough to implement the Ada 83 intent!

                      Randy Brukardt