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From: Jeff Carter <carter@innocon.com>
Subject: Re: Reading a line of arbitrary length
Date: 1997/02/13
Message-ID: <330319F1.41C67EA6@innocon.com>#1/1
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References: <5ds40o$rpo@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
 <01bc18d6$41e00680$188c71a5@dhoossr.iquest.com>
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Date: 1997-02-13T00:00:00+00:00
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David C. Hoos, Sr. wrote:
> 
> What you do is read into a temporary String of length larger than any you
> will encounter.  Then you use the value of the actual parameter supplied
> for the formal parameter "Last" to take the appropriate slice from the
> temporary string.

This assumes, of course, that you can define a "length larger than any
you will encounter." In some cases, you cannot. This is still not a
problem; see "Variable-Length String Input in Ada," _Ada Letters_, 1989
May/Jun, which presents a function

function Get_Line (File : Text_Io.File_Type := Text_Io.Current_Input)
return String;

which can then be used to initialize a String object:

declare
   S : String := Get_Line;
begin
   -- use S
end;

Get_Line returns all characters between the current position in File and
the next line terminator, and skips the line terminator. The String
returned has a lower bound of 1 and a length equal to the number of
characters read.
-- 
Jeff Carter
Innovative Concepts, Inc.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.