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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Better way to fill Storage_IO?
Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 17:24:29 -0500
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"J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message 
news:s850rr$mvm$1@dont-email.me...
...
> "X'Image denotes the result of calling function S'Image with Arg being X, 
> where S is the nominal subtype of X."
>
> So, it's a special notation, like a kind of macro, with no proper 
> definition. This hurts my purist's state of mind...

Naw, it's an attribute, just like 'Pos and 'First(N), neither of which 
correspond to anything you can write. Saying that attributes are subprograms 
(outside of the cases where redefinition is allowed, like 'Read) simply buys 
a vast amount of special-case work with virtually no benefit to the user. 
(In Janus/Ada, at least, we have to fake treating these things as functions, 
as we could not afford [back in the day, of course] the space to materialize 
all of these little-used functions. [Float types have some 20-odd of 
them!]).

If someone has to pay a price, it might as well be the language standard and 
not every implementer (and the users that actually try to use these things 
as functions and run into bugs in stuff no one ever tries).

Water under the dam in any case, since no one has any reason to change any 
of this.

                              Randy.