Re: Ada equivalent of C "static" structures

[john@assen.demon.co.uk (John McCabe)]

Michael Ibarra <ibarra@mccabe.com> wrote:

>I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction:
>
>I need to declare a record which has "file" scope.  This would be
>something that every unit within this file could access, but could
>not be accessed from any unit outside of this file.
>
>Any ideas???
>
>thanks in advance
>-Mike

This really depends on exactly what you require. If you have 1 package
to each file then Mr. Schneider's answer should be adequate, however
if you are intending to have more than 1 package in a file then you
will need to look closer at the overall structure. I'm sure I'll be
corrected if I'm wrong here, but Ada doesn't support e.g.

with System;

type X is record
	:
	:
end record;

package body p_1 is
	:
	:
end p_1;

package body p_2 is
	:
	:
end p_2;

All type and object definitions must be within a program unit, and a
file isn't one of those. You cold put a package definition round the
above stuff, but then (In Ada 83) you would run into complications.

My advice would be to define a separate package with the type or
object definition you require, and only "with" it in a single file
e.g:

*file1*
package data_package is
	type x is record
		:
		:
	end record;

	x_value : x;
end data_package;

*file2*
with data_package;
package body p_1 is
	:
	:
end p_1;

package body p_2 is
	:
	:
end p_2;

etc.


Best Regards
John McCabe <john@assen.demon.co.uk>