At 01:12 PM 11/12/98 -0800, Mark Lundquist wrote: >> Adding special notation for declaring classes in Ada would have created > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> either some unnecessary restrictions or backward compatibility problems. > >Yes -- that is the position I was taking. My use of the phrase "special >class construct" is to be understood as identical with your phrase >"special notation for declaring classes". Okay. If you regard "a package specification containing a single tagged type declaration and declarations of operations on that type," as equivalent to a class in other languages, you could consider that as a special class construct. But part of my point was that having a "special notation" would have eliminated the possibility of defining several classes/tagged types in the same package. Because of this--and the 'Class operation you can create classes that are closely intertwined. (It would be nice to be able to easily create such mutually interdependent types in different packages, but that is a different discussion.) Of course, there is a rule preventing operations from being dispatching operation of more than one tagged type, but that is needed for other reasons. Robert I. Eachus with Standard_Disclaimer; use Standard_Disclaimer; function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...