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From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: user-defined assignment
Message-ID: <7943@aw.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 88 13:16:31 GMT
Sender: netnews@sei.cmu.edu
Lines: 12


I don't want to become too embroiled in the current
debate about user-defined assignment, but one serious
misconception should, I feel, be corrected.

The ability to use ":=" as a subprogram designator
would in no way change the current strength or weakness
of Ada's typing model.  The process of overload resolution
would check actuals against formals, just as it does for,
say, "+" at present.  Naturally, a malicious implementor
could encode the body of ":=" so as to violate the typing
rules, just as an implementor of "+" can today.