Re: Learning Ada & a question

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <38F2E992.EDB2DCCE@interact.net.au>, G <gmw@interact.net.au> writes:

> and then work the meaning out from there.   As there are many more books
> out there
> on C++, it gives me a broader view of things.  I live in Australia and
> have to order books from overseas if I want texts on Ada.  (Hard copies
> are more comfortable).

In the US many people order Ada text by mail, and although delivery
may be quicker the principle in the same.  Yes, I find Ada books in
a few technical bookstores around Boston, but unfortunately they are
usually books I already own.

> In C++ they have devised all these ingenious little techniques for
> getting more than one return value from a function.  I am just wrapping
> my mind around the notion of pass-by-reference with pointers and
> references.  I know that access types are a sort of pointer in Ada.  Can
> you do the same things in Ada ?  Do you need to when Procedures can be
> called just as easily as functions anyways and return as many things as
> you need ?  (I maybe didnt say that right).

In my experience writing a procedure with OUT (or IN OUT) parameters
is much easier than writing a data structure with multiple components
to be returned.  There are certainly cases where I use the technique
involving a data structure, but that is mainly where the data structure
must be used by many different procedures and functions in the program.