Steve Kerr wrote in message <36ADB3F7.7A239560@gecm.com>...
>Matthew Heaney wrote:
>
>[....snip snip.....]
<snip>
>  More simply, you can use the value attribute. For example
>
>    integer'value("4")
>
>will give you the integer value 4, not the code for ASCII "4".
>
>This attribute can be used with any string representing a discrete type, so
>I guess boolean'value("TRUE") works too (although I have only ever tried it
>with numeric values). Leading and trailing spaces in the string are
ignored,
>so there's no need to trim it. As a matter of interest, this 'value is the
>opposite of 'image.
>
Not quite true -- it's for every _scalar_ type which includes reals, as well
as discretes:

Hear what RM95 says:

S�Value For every scalar subtype S:

S�Value denotes a function with the following specification:

function S'Value(Arg : String)
return S'Base

This function returns a value given an image of the value as a String,
ignoring any leading or trailing spaces. See 3.5.