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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,76da32d8c4934801 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Operating System in Ada (was Ada --> C Translation) Date: 1998/10/13 Message-ID: <1998Oct13.041000.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 400545452 X-Nntp-Posting-Host: eisner.decus.org References: <6vobnk$vt9$1@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> <6vp23h$hc3$1@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> <1998Oct12.072036.1@eisner> <87d87xmdkn.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> X-Trace: news.decus.org 908266203 29642 KILGALLEN [192.67.173.2] Organization: LJK Software Reply-To: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-10-13T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <87d87xmdkn.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com>, Chris Morgan writes: > kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes: > >> The operating system that most people would think about copying first >> is Unix -- and that seems like a non-starter from its anti-Ada interfaces >> (null-terminated strings and the like). Yes it is possible to interact, >> but it is not in the "spirit" of Ada. > > I totally disagree with this. My view of Ada strings is that they are > a higher level construct than C style strings. I believe at least some > Ada implementations on top of Unix simply use many of the standard C > library's string functions under the hood. I may be wrong but isn't a > null-terminated string a valid representation of an Ada string? Ada strings allow a null in the middle, without terminating the string. To the extent that an operating system accepts that, it would behave quite differently from what a C programmer would expect, and would not match Unix. I believe the null termination is defined in the C standard. Larry KIlgallen