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From: defaria@hpclapd.HP.COM (Andy DeFaria)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Stylistic question: returning strings vs. pointers to strings
Message-ID: <920019@hpclapd.HP.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 90 17:32:59 GMT
References: <10968@june.cs.washington.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Calif. Language Lab
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>/ hpclapd:comp.lang.ada / ka@cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) /  3:19 pm  Mar  5, 1990 /

>Being a former C programmer, I naturally made arg(i) return a pointer
>to a string, using a separate package named mytypes to contain the
>definition of a pointer to a string:
>
>	package mytypes is
>	    type string_ptr is access string;
>	end mytypes;
>
>	with mytypes; use mytypes;
>	package args is
>	    function nargs return integer;
>	    function arg(index: integer) return string_ptr;
>	end args;

My question would be why the package mytypes?  Why not:

package ARGS is

   type ARG_PTR is access STRING;

   function NARGS                return integer;
   function ARG (index: integer) return ARG_PTR; 
 
end ARGS;

It is a tendency for C programmers to  use packages as #include files.   In
my opinion this  causes confusion.  This  example creates a  string pointer
called  ARG_PTR but by   its usage it  can   only  point to an command line
arguement.