Re: Ada and string literals

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> writes:

> Suppose you want an array of strings.  Well, you can't have
> one in Ada, except in the unusual case where they all happen
> to have the same length.  So you use array of access to string.
>
>     Colors : constant String_Sequence :=
>         ("red"'Access, -- This is not Ada!
>          "orange"'Access,
>          "dark green"'Access,
>          ...);
>
> That gets pretty tedious if you declare a name for each color.

That's what "+" is for:

   function "+" (Item : in String) return access constant String
   is begin
      return new String'(Item);
   end "+";

     Colors : constant String_Sequence :=
         (+"red", -- This _is_ Ada!
          +"orange",
          +"dark green",
          ...);

I would be _very_ nice if that definition of "+" was in Ada.Strings
somewhere.

Of course, if you also want the non-constant equivalent:

   function "+" (Item : in String) return access String

then can you have ambiguity problems.

-- 
-- Stephe