Re: How (or Where?) to get started on Ada? (Properly)

["G.B." <rm-dash-bau-haus@dash.futureapps.de>]

On 04.09.13 13:01, e.s.harney@gmail.com wrote:

> Well, I'm only looking at it since Ada seems to be missing things like widely-used/extensively-tested HTTP or crypto libraries. So I'll have to figure out a way to using things like curl or openssl from Ada. I'm not sure if something more complex than simple function is really necessary for this.

One popular library is AWS ("Ada Web Server"); it includes
HTTP, SMTP, and makes SSL available when the supporting
libraries are present on a system. (So, no need to write
bindings yourself.)

Maybe this web application framework is worth a look:
http://blog.vacs.fr/index.php?category/Ada

> Either way though, my point was that Barnes' book (judging by the table of contents on Amazon) does not seem to concern itself with how to get your program to do something useful. My guess is that in order to do so it would probably need another 200-300 pages explaining how to get your program to interact with the rest of the world.

The book surely covers techniques one might need
in order to tackle real world issues.

>> ISO 10646 is mandatory for
>> current Ada, so UTF-8 won't be a problem.
>
> That is interesting. What I had found through Google was this http://commons.ada.cx/Unicode which isn't really that helpful.
>
> How does Ada represent its strings internally? (Or more specifically, what character set do the standard library functions for processing strings assume/expect?).

Typically, an Ada compiler, like a C compiler (CHAR_BIT)
will find a representation for standard characters that
agrees with the requirements of the LRM and is a good
match for the given hardware  ;-) This includes passing
language borders.
For string I/O, see the String Encoding sections of the
standard library. Like Dmitry said, you are in control
here. That's not unlike Java when putting an encoding
object somewhere in the I/O chain.

Control extends to the possibility of defining your own
character types and strings of such characters, and add
representation clauses as needed. (A character is an
enumeration type.)