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From: Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:01:12 +0200
Organization: Adalog
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Date: 2004-09-16T10:01:12+02:00
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Kevin Cline a =E9crit :
> It is a bit of a problem.  Just like natural language composition,
> there's a fine line between too brief, too verbose, and just right.=20
> In the table above, the interesting parts are X and "1", "12", and
> "123".  The three repetitions of To_Unbounded_String take up most of
> the text while saying nothing of interest, and could be left out if
> Ada supported implicit conversions at all.  Perhaps Ada's prohibition
> of implicit conversions was a reaction to the problems they caused in
> FORTRAN and C programming.  No doubt that FORTRAN and C got implicit
> conversions mostly wrong, but that doesn't mean that they are always
> bad.  It's pretty obvious what it means to convert "1" to an unbounded
> string.
>=20
True, and that's precisely why the unary "+" is defined (and=20
redefinable) in the language. It provides a convenient way to make=20
conversion functions that are not totally hidden, but do not take too=20
much visibility in the text.

At least, that's what I remember Ichbiah used to justify "+".
--=20
---------------------------------------------------------
            J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr