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From: Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada and string literals
References: <4978d638-a04b-4561-85e9-cf6620265af2@googlegroups.com>
 	<amrv6sFbs48U1@mid.individual.net>
 	<wccboc6hcce.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:20:24 -0500
Message-ID: <85wqus1887.fsf@stephe-leake.org>
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Date: 2013-02-01T08:20:24-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

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