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From: mheaney@on2.com (Matthew Heaney)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Array Of Constant Strings?
Date: 15 Apr 2003 19:17:14 -0700
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Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message news:<b7h7i3$op4$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>...
> 
> Will you collect a few impressions students have of the
> readability of Ada programs? (As this might add more substance to
> the argument that Ada syntax has advantages.)

Well, here's one case where the C syntax is much simpler.  In order to
declare an array of strings in C, all I have to do is:

  const char* sa[] =
  {
     "now",
     "is",
     "the",
     "time"
  };

To do the equivalent in Ada, I'd have to do this:

  type String_Constant_Access is
     access constant String;

  type String_Array is
     array (Positive range <>) of String_Constant_Access;

  Now_String : aliased constant String := "now";
  Is_String : aliased constant String := "is";
  The_String : aliased constant String := "the";
  Time_String : aliased constant String := "time";
  
  SA : constant String_Array :=
    (Now_String'Access,
     Is_String'Access,
     The_String'Access,
     Time_String'Access);

Tucker showed this on CLA once:

   SA : constant String_Array := 
     (new String'("now"),
      new String'("is"),
      new String'("the"),
      new String'("time"));

Since all the string literals have static values, then no heap is
really allocated.  But this is really a compiler optimization -- I
don't know whether you can really depend on it.