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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: why Ada type casting is different from other languages?
 newType(value) vs. (newType)value
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:41:00 +0100
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Date: 2014-07-14T18:41:00+01:00
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"G.B." <rm-dash-bau-haus@dash.futureapps.de> writes:

> "Alternatively, it may be better to increase the complex-
>  ity of the syntax in order to reduce homonyms which blur
>  the signal. For example, the meaning of the various compo-
>  nents of the Turing expression^7:
>
>
>    f(C(p).A(I))(N)
>
> "might be better conveyed with the syntax:
>
>    f(C::p->A_{I})[N]
>
> "The second form, whilst regrettably no more mnemonic than
>  the first, does at least provide adequate visual differen-
>  tiation between pointer dereference, array indexing, func-
>  tion call, and substring extraction.
>
> ^7:
> "Create a substring consisting of the Nth letter of
>  the string returned by the function f when passed
>  the Ith element of the array member A of the object
>  within collection C which is pointed to by p".
>
> Linda McIver & Damian Conway,
> Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design

Cripes.

The first (Ada-ish) version makes sense to me, the second -- ugh.

Actually, the Ada version might be

  f(p.A(I))(N)

depending on what "the object within collection C which is pointed to by
p" means.