Tucker Taft <[log in to unmask]> wrote on 22 April 1999 00:24: |Speaking as a compiler writer, I would say the implementation |issues are minor, compared to everything else we already support. I would second this, speaking from my own point of view; I suspect you'll get other compiler writers who disagree. It could well make some tools significantly trickier. |The key issue in my view is the Ada design philosophy. Extensible syntax |is inconsistent with the principle that Ada programs are intended |to be readily shared, read, understood, and enhanced by other |programmers. Extensible syntax is great for a "personal" programming |language, but not great for a "group" or "team" or "enterprise" |or "international" programming language. I think it's interesting to compare languages such as POP, APL, Prolog (one of my favourites), various derivatives thereof, and various other languages, which permit unlimited definition of 'user' operators; in practice, such special operators are used heavily in some languages (notably POP), but only sparingly in most. Personally, I find the ability to define a small selection of my own operators in Prolog to be incredibly useful. There's no doubt that, without care, you can reduce your code to something resembling the output of a spaghetti machine on steroids; so the point is you have to take care not to do this. The facility is otherwise tremendously useful, e.g. instead of (in Ada): X := Max(Max(Max(Max(23.0-6.5*Y,Y),Y+Z),Y-Z,Limit); I could define a 'max' operator, and put (in Prolog): X is 23.0-6.5*Y max Y max Y+Z max Y-Z max Limit, and, I think most readers will agree, this is more readable rather than less: the operator says what it means; it is associative, so its direction of precedence doesn't matter; it is defined, fairly naturally I think, at a lower precedence than the arithmetic operators. However, I think it would also be fair---if rather blunt---to suggest that, in a typical programming shop, you're always going to get a few programmers who would be likely to abuse such a facility so badly that it's better to take it away from everyone. You could say that the danger of spaghetti outweighs the danger of stodge. |For what that's worth... Ada was always designed as a thoroughly practical, workmanlike programming language. It had to be: the DoD would not have accepted anything less. My own opinion is that Tuck et al did a great job of continuing that practicality, while updating the language to increase its flexibilty and expressive power. I feel, on balance, that introducing user-defined operators would have decreased the practicality more than it would have increased the power. |-Tuck ------------------------------------- Nick Roberts -------------------------------------