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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: File manipulations in Ada.Text_IO
Date: 1 Aug 2005 14:32:56 -0500
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In article <wauHe.7071$0C.1043@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>, Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com> writes:
> Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>> 
>> One way using standard Ada is an attempt to open the file.
>> If the external file doesn't exist, exception Name_Error
>> is raised.
> 
> Ada 0X will have Ada.Directories as part of the standard library, which 
> will include such a function.

But such a function for a non-wildcarded filename is always going
to be susceptible to a race condition if the next step would be
to open the file.  The file might be deleted or created between
the test and using the information gained from the test.