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From: "Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com>
Subject: Re: Nontrivial examples of C interface with Ada
Date: 2000/05/24
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-05-24T15:02:55+00:00
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gressett@iglobal.net wrote:
> 
> Is there an example of a well-done, nontrivial interface to a C
> library readily available on the web? Examples of communication with
> C things defined like
> 
The Win32ada binding to the Win32api is a major example of Ada bindings
to C stuff. It comes with the GNAT compiler and is probably available
from lots of other sources as well. (I think Aonix ships with it too,
but I have not looked at that product in a while.)

I personally find it a pain to use because of the large variety of types
for the same things, the constant use of error flags instead of
enumerated types and all the parameters are so C-ish that it doesn't fit
in with The Ada Way of thinking. (Some of this is just because the
Win32api is organically grown rather than engineered.) I'd prefer to see
a "thick" binding that simply hid all of the conversions, error flags,
etc. so that you had something that looked like Ada rather than
C-Written-In-Ada. But I suppose there is a need for the thin binding to
exist.

MDC
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