Re: FW: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada?

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Well, lets observe that A Solution Does Exist. Right now, you *can* find 
ways of dealing with Unbounded_String in all the contexts you might want 
by making use of To_String and To_Unbounded_String. I think the issue is 
more one of convenience. Personally, I'd prefer not to be jumping 
through all sorts of hoops if I want to just use Unbounded_String and 
forget about String.

Your position of not wanting to make the ARM too big is probably 
desirable. That's where I'd go into my regular rant about having a 
Conventional Ada Library managed externally from the standard. You could 
add packages that made simple, easy access to most of the things one 
might want without having to impact the standard. The language remains 
small(er) and you don't add complexity to the validation effort, yet you 
can have most of the things you might want in a "Standard" way.

MDC



M�rio Amado Alves wrote:
>>>... Only String versions is enough.
>>
>>And some thing an array of integers are enough. I thought the
>>point of returning Unbounded_String was to make the Strings a 
>>bit easier to handle.
> 
> 
> *Unbounded_String* is designed for easier handling of strings, not
> necessarily *functions* returning Unbounded_String. Even Unbounded.Slice
> returns a String. It's a matter of pros and cons. What do extra versions
> of Get_Line buy us? Only that you can write
> 
>   An_Unbounded_String := Get_Line;
> 
> instead of
> 
>   An_Unbounded_String := To_Unbounded_String (Get_Line);
> 
> Now balance this with the cons:
> 
> - longer ARM, or
> 
> - will take space from more important things;
> 
> - overloaded functions that in some contexts will produce ambiguity
> (which the programmer must resolve with more code).
> 
> My impression is cons > pros, that's all.
> 
> (What is the AI for this anyway?)
> 
> 


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