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Date: 27 Aug 93 15:35:04 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.ne
t!inmet!panther.warm.inmet.com!brennan@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (William Brennan)
Subject: Re: How to assign STRINGs?
Message-ID: <1993Aug27.153504.1340@warm.inmet.com>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1993Aug25.121754.20413@hellgate.utah.edu> matwood%peruvian.cs.utah.
edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Atwood) writes:

>So, how DO i assign the results of a function returning an unconstrained
>string to a constrained string?

Here's a solution I've found useful.  It relies on the fact that an 
unconstrained array can be constrained when the memory is allocated for
an access pointer (i.e., at run time).
It has the advantage of maintaining a string of the correct length, containing 
only the characters which are real (avoiding pad characters).
It has the disadvantage of using dynamic memory.

with Text_IO;
with Unchecked_Deallocation;
procedure ECHO is
  type String_Ptr_Type is access String;
  procedure Dispose is new Unchecked_Deallocation( String, String_Ptr_Type );
  CMDLINE_PTR: String_Ptr_Type;
begin
  CMDLINE_PTR := new String'(DOS.GET_PARMS);
  Text_IO.Put_Line( CMDLINE_PTR.all );
  ... other work with CMDLINE_PTR ... 
  Dispose( CMDLINE_PTR );
end ECHO;