This is a really interesting topic. Ada functions are curious. On the one hand they look as if they are going to be well behaved since they only allow in parameters and thus it appears as if they cannot have side effects. But of course they can have any side effects they like by using global variables! And parameters can be access types and nothing prevents the accessed values from being changed. Indeed access parameters are a sort of sly way of getting in out parameters anyway.

The proposal (AI-323) was to allow functions to have parameters of all modes. The rationale for the proposal is well summarized in the problem part of the AI thus "Ada functions can have arbitrary side effects, but are not allowed to announce that in their specifications".

Clearly, Ada functions are indeed curious. But strangely, this AI was abandoned quite early in the revision process on the grounds that it was "too late". (Perhaps too late in this context meant 25 years too late.) In any event there was no agreement on a way forward since there are strong arguments both ways. But there was agreement that time would be better spent discussing and agreeing other matters.

One suggestion is that two kinds of functions should be supported. Absolutely pure side-effect free functions that merely deliver the value of some state. Functions in SPARK [9] are like this. And the other sort of function could be one that is just like a procedure and can do anything and have all modes of parameters but for convenience returns a result which can then be used in an expression.

It is interesting to note that Preliminary Ada [11] had value returning procedures as well as functions. The functions were pure but value returning procedures were much as current functions and could have side effects. But value returning procedures could not have out and in out parameters. The difference between the two was thus not enough and so pure functions were dropped and value returning procedures became functions.

This topic may deserve to be revisited at some time.

© 2005, 2006 John Barnes Informatics.

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