Re: Ada Recursion with strings

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Adam Beneschan schrieb:

> The function
> 
> Ada.Strings.Fixed.Trim (S, Ada.Strings.Both)
> 
> will get rid of all leading and trailing spaces from S.
> 
> I'd much prefer to have an 'Image attribute that didn't add that blank
> (it only adds it for nonnegative numbers).

Can I suggest a stronger emphasis on the Ada packages providing
value-to-string conversions.  Isn't the 'Image attribute already
overused? (Worse, non-portable 'Img seems to be popular.)
Anyway, the 'Image attribute is not available for all types.


>  I'm not sure why the
> decision was made (back in Ada 83) to add the blank; having a
> formatted number with either a blank or a minus sign in front can help
> get numbers lined up in a report, but 'Image returns a variable-length
> string anyway so I don't think it could be used effectively to line
> anything up. 

Just speculating, maybe positioning used this procedure?

    procedure SET_COL (TO : in POSITIVE_COUNT);

Anyway, there is, and seems to have been,

    procedure PUT(TO   : out STRING;
                  ITEM : in NUM;
                  BASE : in NUMBER_BASE := DEFAULT_BASE);

where TO'Length would have to be equal to
the number of digits in Word/2**8.