Re: OO Style with Ada Containers

[braver <deliverable@gmail.com>]

Matt -- thanks a million for your detailed answers and analysis of Ada
Containers usage!  This is in fact what's needed the most -- not a
just a dry ARM spec, but as examples.  Perhaps you and others can post
a bunch of code somewhere with the containers usage?  That would be
most instructive.

A few questions about your solution:

--STX

-- I sense this allows to unroll a blob of Ada compilation units into
one unit per file, which tool reads this and does it?

What's the tradeoff between your solution, using

   package Map_Types is new Indefinite_Hashed_Maps
     (String,
      Natural,
      Hash_Case_Insensitive,
      Equal_Case_Insensitive);

-- and Ludivoc Brenta's, using Hashed_Sets of your modified
discriminated

   type Word_Counter (Length : Positive) is record
      Word  : String (1 .. Length);
      Count : Natural;
   end record;

In general, if I use lots of strings -- and my application area os
computational linguistics -- should I try to use plain String(1..N),
trying all kinds of tricks to constrain it as above, or
Ada.Strings.Unbounded are OK, too?

I've tried to leverage plain String, thinking that it being
unconstrained array can allow for behavior similar to dynamic strings
in Python, etc.  Alas, I cannot append to it doing S := S & Tail;...
OTOH, I can't index Unbounded string with US(i), -- or can I? -- and
it doesn't look pretty to use Element everywhere...  And if Element,
can that be well used with prefix notation?

Cheers,
Alexy