Of Empty Records

Of Empty Records

[Black Adder]

    I have a problem when using empty records. Here is the sample type
    declaration that I use:

      type EMPTY_TYPE is
        record
          null;
        end record;

    now, I would like to declare a constant of that type, i.e.

      EMPTY : constant EMPTY_TYPE := ??? ;

    but it seems there is no way I could specify a value of type
    EMPTY_TYPE. One solution would be to declare a variable of that type,
    without any initial value. It does work on my compiler, behaves as a
    constant, but I don't "like" it.

    Is there another solution? did the language designers simply ignore
    this problem?

    Thanks,

      Magnus Kempe
      CS Dept.
      Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne

      kempe@elma.epfl.ch (not always, avoid stormy days...)