Re: Can I treat Current_Output as a file of bytes?

[Bj�rn Persson <bjorn_persson.spam-is-evil@sverige.nu>]

On 6 Nov 2002 20:04:25 -0800
dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote:

> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message news:<usja17cbnvhc65@corp.supernews.com>...
> > I would be very surprised if a compiler implementer went out of their
> > way to add stuff there that OS does not add. In this case, neither
> > Windows nor Unix adds any line breaks to standard output, so why would
> > an Ada compiler? (If you're not using Windows or Unix, your mileage may
> 
> The OP seemed to think that the line break was getting added on the
> "Close" call, if I was reading him correctly. Seeing as this method
> would require calling the exact same "Close" routine, I think you can
> perhaps see the source of my concern.

Gnat's Ada.Text_IO does it in a procedure called Terminate_Line that 
gets called when closing or resetting a text file:

   procedure Terminate_Line (File : File_Type) is
   begin
      FIO.Check_File_Open (AP (File));

      --  For file other than In_File, test for needing to terminate last line

      if Mode (File) /= In_File then

         --  If not at start of line definition need new line

         if File.Col /= 1 then
            New_Line (File);

         --  For files other than standard error and standard output, we
         --  make sure that an empty file has a single line feed, so that
         --  it is properly formatted. We avoid this for the standard files
         --  because it is too much of a nuisance to have these odd line
         --  feeds when nothing has been written to the file.

         elsif (File /= Standard_Err and then File /= Standard_Out)
           and then (File.Line = 1 and then File.Page = 1)
         then
            New_Line (File);
         end if;
      end if;
   end Terminate_Line;

As you can see, standard out and standard error are excepted if the 
page, line and column numbers are all 1, and since stream operations 
don't affect these numbers, I get rid of the line break if I write 
everything through the stream. For disk files the line break is always 
added, but for those I can use Sequential_IO, which will hopefully 
only write what I tell it to write.

Bj�rn Persson