Re: Escape Sequences in Strings

[Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org>]

Ken Garlington wrote:

> Character     C_Escape_Sequence     Ada_Equivalent
> "     \"     "" or Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Quotation
> '     \'     ' or Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Apostrophe
> ?     \?     ? or Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Question
> \     \\     \ or Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Reverse_Solidus
> BEL     \a     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.BEL
> BS     \b     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.BS
> FF     \f     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.FF
> NL     \n     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.NL
> CR     \r     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.CR
> HT     \t     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.HT
> VT     \v     Ada.Characters.Latin_1.VT
> octal     \ddd     Character'Val(8#ddd#)
> hex     \xhh     Character'Val(16#hh#)

And you can even avoid the verbosity (if desired) using a "use" clause as in:

with Ada.Characters.Latin_1 ;
use Ada.Characters.Latin_1 ;
procedure Demo is
    Some_String    : constant String    := "Ring the bell: " & BEL & "New Page:
" & FF  ;
begin
    null ;
end Demo ;

Its pretty obvious to us Ada Old Timers, but a newbie might see  "Ring the
bell: " & Ada.Characters.Latin_1.BEL as so needlessly verbose that they'll run
off telling everyone that Ada sucks because they can't write  "Ring the bell:
\a". If it were true, they'd have a point.

Just a small thing - but often something we forget.

MDC
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