Re: Will Ada-95 Programs Written in MS Windows Run in MacOS and Linux Without Some Tweaking.

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 6:37:28 AM UTC, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Simon Wright" <simon@pushface.org> wrote in message news:lywqjf45za.fsf@pushface.org... ... > and as far as I can tell this was caused by the Windows line > terminator[2] in the data file; that's to say, when I removed the CR > character from the Windows CR/LF the program decoded correctly. > > I'm not sure of the best way to get an Ada program not to care what sort > of input line terminators it's reading. I'm surprised that that would be a problem, at least for Unix and Windows files. It's pretty simple to design Text_IO so that it can read either properly; that's how Text_IO in Janus/Ada works. (The only difference for it between Windows and Unix versions is the characters output by New_Line). Of course, such a Text_IO would make a real hash out of old Mac files. (I usually use an Ada program to convert text files to Windows format; it's just a simple loop of Get_Line/Put_Line pairs.) But if you don't want to change the terminators (or your compiler has an unnecessarily inflexible Text_IO), I'd suggest using Stream_IO. Of course, then you'll have to do your own buffering of input (but that's usually a good idea anyway). Randy.

Can I have a very small say here while you heavyweights give your more experienced suggestions.

My Ada program in its present form which I am very loth to change must always use the 'GET' and 'PUT' functions and the attributes  'Pos and 'Val for handling the incomming plaintext and the the outgoing ciphertext.

This is the highly salient property that enables vast tracts of data to be read in automatically in one fell swoop by the cipher (even the source code that Ada programs use) without human intervention (certainly not requiring hand-picked graduates as at present).  

Future usage of encryption to secure files will benefit hugely from this becuse it can be done by any lay person on a home computer who needs no knowledge of programmimg, cryptography or mathematics and just two-finger keyboarding is sufficient.

Can I say thanks to all of you who are subscribing to this discussion - thus far I have been assured that my stuff will run in gnat 2013 on MAC - that is just great - I would dearly like to know also if any reader is totally on top of it all and is able to run the test programs. encrypt their own batch files , send encrypted emails and do external blanket encrytion of old files for back up and secure archiving etc. 

adacrypt