Re: Simple Pascal question

On Sun, 4 Aug 2024 21:00:35 -0400
Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 8/4/2024 8:09 PM, Dan Cross wrote:

In article <v8o4h8$2ut3$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote: 

On 8/4/2024 8:22 AM, Dan Cross wrote: 

Interesting, this has become du jour again in modern languages,
but those tend to provide access to a `slice` type that provides
a window onto the underly array, and implicitly encodes a
length (and usually a "capacity").  This makes working with
arrays in such languages very convenient. 

>
Different people may have different opinions on what is a modern
language. 

 
Designed in this century. 

 
That rules out Java.
 
But there are still languages like C#, Scala and Kotlin.
 

But a lot of the widely used static typed languages does not
have any problems with arrays of different lengths as they
are treated as objects. 

 
Like I said, modern languages make this a solved problem. 

 
But C#, Scala and Kotlin also just allows for passing any length
arrays to methods taking an array.
 

Like:
>
public class FlexArray {
     private static void dump(int[] a) {
         for(int v : a) {
             System.out.printf(" %d", v);
         }
         System.out.println();
     }
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         int[] a1 = { 1 };
         int[] a2 = { 1, 2 };
         int[] a3 = { 1, 2, 3 };
         dump(a1);
         dump(a2);
         dump(a3);
     }
} 

 
Java arrays are more like the aforementioned slices. 

 
I don't think so.
 
Java does not have anything like slices.
 
C# does.
>

Pay attention that despite being designed (or at least brought to
public) in this century, C# originally lacked slices.
They were added relatively recently, in v. 8.0, and referred in c# docs
as "Indices and ranges".

C# Span is similar to slices. But C# Span and C# array are far from
the same.
 
Arne