Streams and Access types

["Rodrigo García" <rodrigo.garcia@epfl.ch>]

Hello,

   As it happens with any elementary type, the serialization of access 
types is implementation defined (RM 13.13.2 (9)). However, that means 
that, when an access variable is serialized, it is the value of the 
access variable itself which is serialized, not the object pointed by 
the access variable.

   In GNAT this value is just a memory address. This is not very useful 
if we want to serialize, let's say, a linked list and then store it in 
the hard disk.

   One solution is to do custom serialization but, does anybody knows of 
an Ada compiler that can automatically serialize the objects pointed by 
access variables (recursively if needed, such in the case of the linked 
list)?

   Thanks

Rodrigo