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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 17:51:16 -0800
From: mvensky@nosve.elan.af.mil
Subject: INFO-ADA_REQUEST
Message-ID: <921216173559910-MTAAFFTC*mvensky@nosve.elan.af.mil>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

I am having a tiny problem with Ada's SEQUENTIAL_IO. I am currently writing
a utility to process sequential tapes written by FORTRAN 77 routines. The recor
d
formats are very well described. However they are heterogeneous, that is they
consist of one hollerith character, followed by an integer, followed by several
more hollerith characters and terminated by a vector of reals, aka floats in Ad
a
. How do I use Ada's strong typing to describe abstract data objects while
reading in this file. If I read the data in using say a word-aligned vector of
floats, I can do some unchecked conversion. This will work but does not seem to
be very clean or elegant. Other possible declarations might cause the dreaded
"DATA_ERROR" exception to be raised.

These records were originally written as unformatted FORTRAN writes. They will
read, fortunately perhaps, by Ada written for the same machine (a Cyber).

I would truely appreciate any insight into how to solve this.

                                       Michael J. Vensky
                                       Edwards Air Force Base