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From: eliben <eliben@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: generic function and overloading
Date: 18 Oct 2007 00:28:38 -0700
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Date: 2007-10-18T00:28:38-07:00
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Hello,

I have a few "hardware" types, for example uint16 and uint32. And I
want to write a functions that will set or clear bits of such types.
For example:

function Bit_Set(word: uint16; bitn: natural) return uint16;

function Bit_Set(word: uint16; bitn: natural) return uint16 is
  mask: uint16 := 2**bitn;
begin
  return word or mask;
end Bit_Set;

However, I realize that such a function would be almost completely
duplicated for the uint32 type. In C++ I would probably define it as a
template on the type of the word, and the compiler would do the job
for me. In Ada, however, when using generics it doesn't seem I can
leave the same function name for all types (as I would do in
overloading). I can define a generic Bit_Set, but then I have to
specialize it for uin16 and uint32 with different function names. Is
there any way I could combine the effects of generics and overloading
and get a single Bit_Set for all my types without writing the code N
times ?

P.S. Ada95

Thanks,
Eli