From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!gandalf.srv.welterde.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!franka.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED.rrsoftware.com!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Proliferation of Reserved Words Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2021 00:54:31 -0500 Organization: JSA Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: Injection-Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2021 05:54:32 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: franka.jacob-sparre.dk; posting-host="rrsoftware.com:24.196.82.226"; logging-data="5685"; mail-complaints-to="news@jacob-sparre.dk" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Response X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.7246 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62070 List-Id: At least twice it was proposed that Ada have "keywords", identifiers with special meaning in the syntax but that were not reserved. The last time (and I forget precisely when that was), the ARG had a slight majority in favor of unreserved keywords as well as reserved words. However, it was resoundly rejected at the WG 9 level. At that time, WG 9 still voted by countries, and it turned out that pretty much everyone in favor of unreserved keywords were from North America. Most Europeans were appalled. Of course, that meant a WG 9 vote with 2 in favor and a large number against. So whenever you think there are too many reserved words in Ada, be assured that it was repeatedly suggested that they not all be reserved, but certain countries would not allow it. At this point, we've given up, since it really would not help much - the majority of words that likely ever be reserved already are (it would most likely matter if a new proposal tried to reserve some commonly used term - "yield" came up some some proposals for Ada 202x that didn't go anywhere). Jeff Carter should note the 8 different uses for "with" in the syntax before he accuses anyone of not reusing reserved words in Ada. It's just the case that it's hard to write something meaningful with the existing reserved words (we almost always try). "parallel" is an interesting case. In my world view, it is wildly different from a task, because it is *checked*, does not *block* or *synchronize* with another thread (all synchronization is via objects or completion), is automatically created (in looping constructs) and therefore requires substantial less care than writing a task. There is another world-view where essentially the checking is not worthwhile and ergo must be suppressed, that performance matters to the point at which a compiler isn't allowed to make choices, and essentially requires *more* care than a task. In that second world-view, parallel constructs are either harmful or worthless. But even there, having a keyword makes it a lot easier to avoid them than trying to figure out which libraries to block. :-) Randy. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" wrote in message news:s93kci$1f55$1@gioia.aioe.org... > On 2021-05-31 22:51, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote: > >> What do others think? Should Ada have made a greater effort at >> overloading reserved words from the beginning? Should we belatedly object >> to adding parallel when we have so many choices already? Or is having a >> large set of reserved words, many of them with similar meanings, a good >> thing? > > I believe that most of reserved keywords can be simply unreserved. > Actually there is no syntactic necessity except for few. The rest is kept > reserved for the sake of regularity only. > > -- > Regards, > Dmitry A. Kazakov > http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de