Re: Help out a Newbie

[jerry@jvdsys.nextjk.stuyts.nl (Jerry van Dijk)]

In article <Pine.OSF.3.95q.971225171217.16971A-100000@osf1.g bakinsan@osf1.gmu.edu writes:

>        Just a quick question and a sample code. I am new to Ada

Good choice!

> and I
>just want to know where I can get a windows (preferably win'95) compiler
>for Ada.

For learning Ada95 there are currently two compilers on the net: GNAT
3.10p1 and ObjectAda 7.1.

Both are already very good compilers. ObjectAda is more Windows Centric
(it's IDE looks a lot like the MS developer studio, supports a lot of
Win/NT stuff) but the free version has a number of build in limitations.
The GNAT compiler is more UNIX-like, although it also includes an basic
IDE.

As you are working on DEC hardware, GNAT might be the best choice, as it
will also become (or already is) available there.

There are links to download both compilers (and the homepages of their
makers) on my homepage: http://www.stad.dsl/~jvandyk.

>        Second, I tried compiling this sample code and I got the following
>errors. I am working on a unix system using DEC's ada compiler.
>
>with Ada.Text_IO;

The current DEC compiler conforms to the Ada83 standard, in this version
of Ada, the Text_IO package was a top level package, not a child of Ada.
If you replace Ada.Text_IO by simply Text_IO your program should work.

(P.S. Ada95 defines Text_IO as an alias for Ada.Text_IO so this will work
 either way :-).


Good luck!
Jerry.

--

-- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland
-- Consultant     | Team Ada
-- Ordina Finance | jdijk@acm.org