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From: ncohen@watson.ibm.com (Norman H. Cohen)
Subject: Re: Q: Dynamically testing type of any variable
Date: 1996/06/05
Message-ID: <4p4c3p$tc5@watnews1.watson.ibm.com>#1/1
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distribution: world
references: <4ov0miINN99m@snoopy.cis.ohio-state.edu>
organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
reply-to: ncohen@watson.ibm.com
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-06-05T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <4ov0miINN99m@snoopy.cis.ohio-state.edu>,
dgibson@snoopy.cis.ohio-state.edu (david scott gibson) writes: 

|> Hi.  Is there any way to determine the type of an arbitrary Ada95
|> variable at runtime?  Inside a generic unit, I'd like to test if a
|> generic formal has been instantiated with a scalar type, and then if
|> so, initialize it to some valid representation.  It doesn't appear
|> that the 'Class or 'Valid attributes help much since neither is
|> defined for all types.  Also, I'd prefer not using any exception
|> trickery to deal with this.  Any ideas?

This is a peculiar requirement.  Can you give us a better idea of what
you are trying to accomplish?

If your template is doing things with objects of your generic formal type
that are improper for uninitialized scalars, and if a particular
invocation of a particular instance actually does these things to
uninitialized scalars, why do you want to mask the error behind an
arbitrary "valid" value?

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com