Re: functions, packages & characters

[Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> Wait a minute...... I seem to recall a nifty example of how you could return
> an arbitrary length string from a function that used Get/Get_Line (?) and
> recursed in the event that the line was longer than the buffer. It might be
> in a code example somewhere like on AdaPower? If you can do that, why not a
> similar subprogram for Unbounded_String? It would be even easier and not
> require recursion since you could just keep reading some arbitrary sized
> buffer in a loop and appending it to an Unbounded_String that is returned to
> the caller.

Such as function PragmARC.Get_Line? It uses a String of only 100
characters, yet still avoids recursion in most applications. A procedure
that built a result in a mode in out [Un]Bounded_String parameter is
perfectly doable would not need to be recursive. But the point of a
Get_Line function, which dates from the days of Ada 83 (see
"Variable-Length String Input in Ada" by J. Carter in ADA LETTERS, 1989
May/Jun), is that you rarely need a variable string abstraction in Ada
if you really understand how to use one-dimensional arrays in Ada.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"You cheesy lot of second-hand electric donkey-bottom biters."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail