implementation question about writing and reading from files

["Francis Crick" <fcrNOSPAMick@fas.NOharvard.SPAMeduNOSPAM>]

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Hi Ada people...I'm teaching myself Ada95, and trying to write programs I
actually want to use at the same time...

I've been messing around for a bit trying to figure out how things work, but
I'm starting to get a little frustrated so I thought i might seek help.

The component I'm writing is for managing files by manipulating small chunks
of them.  The basic idea is that if the component is eventually given every
chunk of an original file, it will be able to reconstruct the original file.
The chunks will be roughly 1mb and the files are probably all going to be
100+mb....

so in addition to other things i'm trying to write procedures that:

read a chunk of any size from any part of a file and write it into memory
and pass back the pointer.

write a chunk of any size into any part of any file.

I haven't really done a lot of this type of work in any other languages, so
I'm not totally sure how I want to do this...i usually code on a much higher
level...

should I use streams?  If so, which stream components?  Also, whats the best
format to keep a big bunch of bytes in memory?  Should that be a stream of
some sort, or a big array or what?

Any suggestion, links, pointers, specs, sample code, or encouraging comments
would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Francis Crick










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