Re: What would you like in Ada202X?

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

> > How would it be less convenient without the space?  A big problem is that 'Image adds an extra space for nonnegative numbers but not for negative numbers, so if you want debug or log output that doesn't look messy you either have to concatenate an extra space somewhere else and live with having two spaces in the output, or use Trim or something like that.

Well, it depends on the format of the debugging, doesn't it?
Consider the following (in a monospaced font)
Debug Log for simulation 128
Position_X: 13
Position_Y:-4
Turn_Index: 8
Ext_Damage: 14
Int_Damage: 0
Squid_Fire: True

Could it be written [formatted] better? Yes.
Could it be worse? XML.

It seems perfectly adequate to me.

> OK, I guess that if you know your numbers aren't negative maybe it might be OK.  But I've found the extra space to be a nuisance, including for debugging and logging outputs.
> 	Sounds like the formatting I'm used to from FORTRAN... The position
> for the sign indicator was always included in the width of the output
> field, whether or not "+" was printed or implied.

That's probably exactly where it came from. The interop w/FORTRAN would have given Ada a big boost in numeric processing "back in the day" and having 'Image and 'Value read/write that way by default ALSO meant that old data-files could more-easily be read in.

But, in any case
   Function Image( Input: In Integer ) Return String is
      use Ada.Strings, Ada.Strings.Fixed;
   begin
      Return Trim( Source => Integer'Image(Input), Side => Ada.Strings.Left );
   end Image;
is not too bad; the real downside is that currently we can't do something like:

   Function Image( Input: In Integer ) Return String Renames
      Ada.Strings.Fixed(
         Source => Integer'Image(Input), -- Have it "know" about the params passed
         Side => Ada.Strings.Left
       );
and have the whole thing in a spec file. (The 2012 standard fixes that so that we can have expressions named as functions, IIUC.) So, is this a big issue?

On the other hand, being able to override the 'Image (and 'Value) attributes might be appropriate.