From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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From: adam@irvine.com (Adam Beneschan)
Subject: Re: Two questions
Date: 1996/11/11
Message-ID: <5689e0$hah@krusty.irvine.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 196007180
references: <561dfo$h2g@news2.delphi.com>
organization: /z/news/newsctl/organization
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-11-11T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <561dfo$h2g@news2.delphi.com> tmoran@bix.com writes:
 
 >The Ada idiom for
 >  char str[20];
 >  sprintf(&str, "variable %s = %d", name, x);
 >would be something like:
 >declare
 >  str:constant string := "variable " & name & " =" & integer'image(x);
 >begin
 > ...
 >Or, since you can return whole strings from functions, you can have
 > ... return "variable " & name & " =" & integer'image(x);

Well, not exactly.  Assuming "x" may contain any 32-bit value
including -2**31, there's not enough room in "str" in the C example to
hold everything.  So the true Ada idiom should be something like:

 declare
    str : constant string := "variable " & name & " =" & integer'image(x);
 begin
    Write_Trash_All_Over_Your_Stack;

I suspect this is an idiom that would be highly familiar to C
programmers. 


:)
                                -- Adam