From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham
	autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Thread: 103376,999932ecc319322a,start
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
Path: 
 g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: spambox@volja.net
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: advice on package design
Date: 7 Mar 2005 08:23:58 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Message-ID: <1110212638.336123.298580@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.192.62.228
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1110212642 4590 127.0.0.1 (7 Mar 2005 16:24:02
 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 16:24:02 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: G2/0.2
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.192.62.228;
   posting-account=sjoIww0AAACsQsohcnPenkRLTMgYA84g
Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8817
Date: 2005-03-07T08:23:58-08:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Hello,
I've written a package for linked list operations for my personal use.
After a while I figured I'd write another package for some string
operations that I use frequently. On their own, they both work well.
Now comes the problem.
My string library uses my linked list library, which must be
instantiated -- the structure of a node must be supplied. After that,
the string library can use procedures from the linked list library. But
what about the end user? The linked list library defines a type, say
linked_list, and the string library instantiates it something like:

type word is record ...
package string_ll is new linkedlists(word);
use string_ll;

Ultimatelly, if some function from my strings package returns a
linked_list (as defined in the linked list package), it will be of the
type string_ll.linked_list, if we follow the above example. How could
it be available for further processing with routines from the linked
list package?

I could "use string_ll" (exactly as in the package) in my end program,
however that's probably a poor design, since the user need not know how
something was instantiated in another package.
If, on the other hand, I make another instance of linkedlist, I must
supply the same argument the string package does ("word" in the above
example), but then the resulting linked_list type would be
some_new_name.linked_list, which is not compatible with what the string
package uses (string_ll.linked_list in the example).

What is the correct way of dealing with such problems?

Thanks,

 andrej