Re: Escape Sequences in Strings

[Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com>]

Instead of moving the cursor using Text_IO, I have seen a very interesting
Ada program written by a Japanese programmer that used the low-level
features of the language to directly reference Address Location
Hexadecimal B800 to manipulate the screen mappings.  This turns out
to be quite easy with Ada.   And it is really fast if you are doing high-speed
game programming.  No ESC sequences required.

Richard Riehle

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Keith Thompson wrote:

> Andrew Hately <hat@cfmu.eurocontrol.be> writes:
> > Jean Cohen wrote:
> [...]
> > > As you all certainly know it is quite easy and
> > > straightforward in C++ to set cursor positions,
> > > the format (tabulators, newlines etc.) of a string etc. by using escape
> > > sequences.
> >
> > IMHO Ada is easier and more straight forward.
> > See section A.10 of the Ada Reference manual. "Text Input-Output"
> > especially A.10.5 "Operations on Columns, Lines and Pages"
>
> It depends on what you're trying to do.  If you want to do things like
> moving the cursor to a specified position on the screen, neither C++
> nor Ada helps you much unless you use a library designed for the
> purpose (curses, ncurses, terminfo, termcap).  Ada's New_Page
> procedure doesn't necessarily perform any specific action if you're
> writing to a terminal; the only thing really guaranteed is that if
> you're writing to a file, it writes something that will be recognized
> as a page break when the file is read using Ada.Text_IO.
>
> --
> Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
> San Diego Supercomputer Center           <*>  <http://www.sdsc.edu/~kst>
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