Re: Data table text I/O package?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2005 20:54:18 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> And if you don't know what you are analyzing for, Ada is hardly the
> programming language to be using. (Unless you're a hard-core Ada nut [a
> category that I qualify in]; but then you hardly need advice from this
> group.) You need a much more dynamic language, perhaps even those Unix
> filters.

I think it depends. I have a quite opposite experience. I'm lazy and always
start to write a UNIX script. After a couple of hours fighting with that
mess I note (usually to late) that to write it in Ada (or even in ANSI C)
would take twice as short.

> For instance, there isn't a way to search for an unbounded string in another
> unbounded string. [TF puts pretty much everything into lists of unbounded
> strings, because it's impossible to predict what sort of string lengths
> items will have.] You have to use To_String to convert to a regular string,
> which is ugly (especially without use clauses):

Yes.

All built-in string types should have a common ancestor.
Ada.Strings.Unbounded was and remains an ugly hack.
 
>      if Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Index (Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Translate
> (Current.Line, Ada.Strings.Maps.Constants.Lower_Case_Map),
> Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_String (Pattern.Line)) /= 0 then

I'm using a table of tokens instead. The string is matched against the
table for a longest token that matches. And I always use anchored search. I
tend to do everything in one pass and Ada fits here well.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de