Command line arguments

[sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)]

Also sprach Ralph Reid III (rreid@ecst.csuchico.edu):
>I have played around with command line parameters in Ada a little,
>and there does not seem to be a standard technique for reading them.
>Several pieces of source code seem to be floating around, and two
>examples came with the Meridian Adavantage compiler I have.  Perhaps
>a standard should be considered for Ada9x?

Undoubtedly it would be pleasant if all Ada compilers on
Unix were interchangeable on argv/argc, but that something
like a POSIX binding not Ada 9X.

Since you retrieve the arguments differently in different OSs,
reading the command line is something which by definition is
not portable(*) so it can't be in the language. Remember that 
the command-line interface itself is OS dependent.

(*) Yes, I know that argc/argv is commonly available with C
implementations. But if you're going to get the command-line
interface right in, say, VMS, you better use the CLI$ routines.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Le fils du maire est en Normandie avec beaucoup de medecins.