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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
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Subject: Re: New aggregates with Ada 2022.
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2022 00:20:05 -0500
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"Marius Amado-Alves" <amado.alves@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1f894a48-b213-46d8-960f-6e97732e6105n@googlegroups.com...
> "... It would be better if slices were implemented as a form of function, 
> so that they can be used when they make sense... (My post-Ada language 
> design includes variable-returning functions, so that sort of need can be 
> accomadated.)"
> (Randy)
>
> What is a "variable-returning function"?

I've imagined that "variable" and "static" are keywords that can be used 
like "constant" to declare objects. (And "constant" is the default, not 
variable.)

Once you have that, it makes sense to allow those in function returns:

       function Foo ... return constant Integer;
       function Bar ... return variable Integer;

Bar returns a variable, which simply means that you can write into it as 
well as read it. Semantically, it is similar to Ada's anonymous access 
types, except that it isn't an access type, so you can't convert it to one 
(with all of the loss of checking that implies).

>Is there available material on this post-Ada language design of yours?

No. It was a pandemic project (when I was essentially stuck at home), and I 
never made a version for public consumption (I wanted to gather more input 
on it before making it widely available). It's obvious that it would be 
quite time-consuming to do that (and I'm not the best explainer of ideas 
anyway - I tend to ramble... :-). So I never finished it (having gotten too 
busy completing Ada 2022 work).

                                 Randy.