From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_MUA_MOZILLA
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Thread: 103376,5312057f44240abb,start
X-Google-NewGroupId: yes
X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
Received: by 10.68.31.165 with SMTP id b5mr21172104pbi.1.1323133963539;
        Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:12:43 -0800 (PST)
Path: 
 lh20ni73937pbb.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!xlned.com!feeder1.xlned.com!newsreader4.netcologne.de!news.netcologne.de!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool3.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:12:42 +0100
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6;
 rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: AUnit: access to local procedure needed when asserting exception
Message-ID: <4edd6c0a$0$6581$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net>
Organization: Arcor
NNTP-Posting-Date: 06 Dec 2011 02:12:42 CET
NNTP-Posting-Host: 9f0e3dff.newsspool3.arcor-online.net
X-Trace: 
 DXC=8GS\LcJog]XE47KDAk81NWMcF=Q^Z^V3X4Fo<]lROoRQ8kF<OcfhCO[N;4mkgO5a?[PCY\c7>ejVXKU]GfNDIe[TW1g4Oa5bZU_
X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@arcor.de
Xref: news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:14847
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Date: 2011-12-06T02:12:42+01:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In agreement with AUnit's docs, I wanted to write a test routine
that tests for an exception being raised. To do so, I wrote
a local procedure that would become a parameter of a generic
procedure Assert_Exception.  However, this generic is gone from AUnit
(the one distributed with both GNAT GPL 2010 and 2011),
and seems to have been replaced with a non-generic procedure that
takes an object of pointer-to-procedure type instead.
The pointer-to-procedure,

   type Throwing_Exception_Proc is access procedure;

is defined at library level in AUnit.Assertions.
Consequently, when seeing procedure Test_Null mostly reproduced below,
the compiler diagnoses (correctly, I think)

     66.       AUnit.Assertions.Assert_Exception (Null_Raises'Access,
                                                  |
         >>> subprogram must not be deeper than access type



    procedure Test_Null (Test : in out Test_Case'Class)
    is

       procedure Null_Raises is
          Position : Natural;
       begin
          Position := Find (Search_Test(Test).Buffer,
			   Get_Null_Pattern, 1);
       end Null_Raises;
       
       --procedure Assert_Raises is
       --   new AUnit.Assertions.Assert_Exception (Null_Raises);
    begin
       AUnit.Assertions.Assert_Exception (Null_Raises'Access,
                                          "null string raises Pattern_Error");
    end Test_Null;

I should be able to write the tests differently, so that everything
necessary for the test routine is declared at the same level as
the pointer-to-procedure type requires.  But why is the simpler
generic gone? I also imagine that the authors of AUnit have had good
reason to introduce a named type---preventing access to local procedures.
Am I missing something?


Georg