Re: calling function but ignoring results

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

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:sbg04v$i7i$1@gioia.aioe.org...
...
> Now if you wanted to skip an integer in the file you could not do it in 
> the proposed way:
>
>    @ := Get (Standard_Input); -- Ambiguous
>
>    @ := Integer'(Get (Standard_Input)); -- Ugly

Maybe you think qualification is "ugly", but it is precisely the Ada tool 
for this sort of problem. It wouldn't make sense to invent a new mechanism 
when an existing one does the job just fine (and it's hard to imagine a 
disambiguation mechanism that didn't include the subtype name).

> I would not say that pieces like:
>
>    declare
>       Ignore : constant Bar := Foo (Baz);
>    begin
>       null;
>    end;

In Ada 202x, renaming is easier (assuming the usual case where overloading 
isn't involved):

   declare
      Ignore renames Foo (Baz);
   begin
      null;
   end;

BTW, I disagree with the OP's premise. To me, this sort of thing is 
*exactly* what you need to do, since it makes it clear that you are ignoring 
the result. And that typically is hidden inside of a thicker binding, so 
it's pretty rare (it won't happen in well-designed Ada packages, but as 
Dmitry says, it will often happen in interfacing, at least with the 
Microsoft stuff!).

...

> But excessive overloading may lead to unexpected collisions if you have 
> many parameters with defaults.

Excessive overloading is obviously bad, so the above doesn't say much. :-) 
Determining when overloading is excessive is the hard part. Recent 
experience suggests that a lot of overloading is ultimately execessive (the 
need to change the name of some containers procedures demonstrates this!!)

                       Randy.