Re: Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package?

[Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com>]

robin wrote:
> Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:
> 
>         >"The need for languages that promote reliability and simplify maintenance
>         >is well established. Hence emphasis was placed on program readability over
>         >ease of writing."
> 
> Ada clearly failed in this aspect.

Hmmm. So you consider the syntax

  put edit (n) (P'-99999999');

more readable than the Ada equivalent

  use Ada.Text_IO.Editing;
  ...
  package Edited_IO is new Decimal_Output (type);
  ...
  Edited_IO.Put (n, To_Picture ("-99999999"));

Interesting. They look reasonably similar to me. If anything,
the Ada version makes it clear from the text that this
I/O is using the Picture feature of the language. However,
if you believe "P" is more readable in this regard, I
suppose we'll have to agree to disagree...

>         >Of course, once you have the zero-fill package (or whatever
>         >other abstraction you intend to reuse), the number of lines
>         >you have to write drops quite a bit.
> 
> No excuse for having everyone who wants to use such a facility
> to have to write it.

1. Why does everyone have to rewrite publicly-available code? I usually
just reuse it. (Perhaps this is an Ada-unique mindset.)

2. The equivalent of your code is directly available in Ada, if
desired (see above).

> It is, after all, avalable ina number of languages including COBOL
> and PL/I.
> 
> The simplicity and usefulness of PL/I in producing
> zero suppression/insertion of characters/general editing/
> in a variety of forms (integer, fixed-point, floating-point) and suitable
> for business and science cannot be refuted.
> 
> As I indicated earlier, just one short line will suffice! :
> 
> put edit (d) (P'999.V999');

What I don't understand is, given the statement above, how I can
restrict the use of the statement above so that "d" is always a
numeric value in the range 0.000 .. 999.999. Implicit strong
typing is available in a number of languages, including Ada, so
there's no excuse for having everyone who wants to use such a
facility to have to write it explicitly. Perhaps you could post
the PL/I solution so that I could compare it to the Ada version.

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