Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Assignment in Ada, etc.
Message-ID: <6592@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 89 19:19:44 GMT
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Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
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From ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning):
> one of the problems is that an in parameter is still a reference which
> must be accounted for.  since there is no mechanism to handle
> initialization distinct from assignment, it is difficult to write a
> robust reference counting collection mechanism.

    OK, I agree.  Nobody ever does this anyway, and I can't imagine
    why anyone would want to. 

>       Actually, preprocessors do exist; I believe the Classic Ada product
>       (which provides inheritance and dynamic binding to the Ada O-O types)
>       works via preprocessing.  However, they must be kept separate from
>       any validated compiler system.
> 
> and thus will never be standardized or recognized by the ada community
> at large?  

    There is a systematic revision process for the Ada language.

    I will be happy to send an Ada 9X revision request form to
    Mr. Dunning or anyone else who requests it.

> hmmmm..... seems to me that mister wolfe hasn't done much lisp
> programming if he thinks that lisp has no concept of data typing.
> perhaps he should read CLtL a bit.  particularly chapter 2 (data
> types), chapter 4 (type specifiers), section 6.2 (data type
> predicates), chapter 9 (declarations), as well as chapters 12, 13, 14,
> 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 which describe the builtin data types and type
> extension methods available to the common lisp programmer.

    OK, I'm not up on the very latest versions of Lisp (of which I
    hear that there are many).  How about multitasking capabilities?


    Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu