Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl)

[Matthew Heaney <matthewjheaney@earthlink.net>]

Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:

> Kevin Cline <kevin.cline@gmail.com> wrote:
[body of Insert snipped]
> :  ++concordance[word] 
> : or
> :  ++$count{$word} ?
> 
> Isn't the comparison at different levels? AI 302 is to be minimal, I
> think, in that every convenient operation can be built from thingies
> present in Ada.Containers.

Yes, that's exactly right.  Which is why the comparison above should
really be:

  Insert (Word);
or
  ++concordance[word] 
or
  ++$count{$word}

Comparing the one-line C++ and Perl statements to the body of the Insert
subprogram defeats the purpose of writing the subprogam!

And the reason why we have to write the subpgram is because Ada doesn't
give you any direct way of returning a reference to variable view from a
function, as C++ does.  But even so, in Ada you can modify objets in
place (in AI-302 by using a downward closure -- which C++ doesn't have).
That's what really matters, not the syntax.

-Matt