Re: 'pretty' clever enough (Was: Parenthesized Target Notation)

Frank Boehme wrote:
> Dominique Colnet wrote:
>>I have not tried since a long time, but I remember that our `pretty´
>>command is clever enough to add the extra semicolon when necessary.
> 
> 
> Once you mention the clever modifications the pretty command makes, I am
> sometimes annoyed when it replaces expressions in manifest numeric
> notations by their value.
> 
> For example, pretty will change
> 
> bytes_per_megabyte: INTEGER is
>    once
>       Result := 1024 * 1024
>    end
> 
> into
> 
> bytes_per_megabyte: INTEGER is
>    once
>       Result := 1048576
>    end
> 
This is clearly a bug !
> I dislike this for two reasons:
> 
> 1. In the resulting notation, the keyword 'once' has become pointless,
> i.e. it is identical to 
> 
> bytes_per_megabyte: INTEGER is 1048576
> 
> 2. The intended purpose of using 'once' was the use of a "computed
> constant". In this case, the reason was to make the code easier to
> understand. "Computed constants" are also used in order to achieve
> plataform independence (for example by using "Maximum_integer" in an
> expression). In that case, of course', pretty cannot pre-compute
> anything. But in both cases, the use of 'once' is justified in the first
> place and pretty should not make any second guess, I think.
I agree.
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