Re: Ada 0x Wish List

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:96hjjl$e1f$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> David C. Hoos, Sr. (david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com) wrote:
> : Ada.Strings.Fixed.Trim (Integer'Image (<integer-expression>))
> : will do it without and leading spaces.
>
> The RM tells me that images of numbers start with a space
> or minus sign, and then there is the 'Width attribute so I
> can allocate a string big enough for every possible image...
> Does someone know some source of information that deals with
> the reasons for this choice for 'Image?
>
>
I believe the reasoning behind it was that Ada83 only had strings of fixed
length, so you need to be as predictable as possible WRT the size of some
string conversion. If you're copying to fixed positions in some sort of
output string, you'd like things to align, etc. as well as fitting into a
predictable space. Hence the leading blank or minus. Now that Ada95 provides
unbounded and bounded strings along with all sorts of clever string
manipulation routines, this becomes much less of a concern - but backward
compatibility will keep this around no doubt pretty much forever.

Personally, I'd rather they had just returned the string without the leading
space. 99% of the time, it turns out to be a nuisance that you just work to
get rid of anyway. Having Ada stick that space in there for the 1% of the
time it might be useful just ends up a waste.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
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