Re: howto make system calls (newbie question)

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

Well, not everything in the world needs to be in an annex to the ARM. The
Posix binding is a fair example. Of course, there you have the problem that
the interface may not be made available by a given compiler and it might not
be applicable in all environments anyway. That's a binding to a specific
class of OS that may not be common across all OS's & one would want to give
that some thought.

Is there a reason to maybe make an OS independent package available that
provided some of the things that might exist in Posix, but might be provided
by a different system in a different manner? Or is Posix widely spread
enough that Ada could just say "If you want access to system facilities of
this type - go see Posix"? Is the Posix binding going to just come with my
compiler and I can go along fat, dumb and happy using it at will with no
thought as to where to find it and no concern for transportability of my
code? The answers are not clear to me.

However, I still think there is room to add some standard libraries to Ada
that make it more useful to the programmer. Clearly the Ada.Strings...
branch is a good example - C may supply some fairly lame string handling
functions but Ada83 provided none at all. Now Ada95 has an area of clear
superiority in that you get some really good pre-fabricated string utilities
that are just there on any implementation and are at your disposal. Might
there not be similar libraries of things that Ada could provide in some
standardized manner? If a C programmer can say "I can do this thing in C -
how do I do it in Ada?" should it be fair game to ask how we might have that
provided in all Ada implementations?

I really wish the Ada Standard Library Working Group had managed to get
somewhere with defining even a starting point for this sort of thing. Even
if a library didn't come by virtue of the ARM, if it was available with a
standard interface and provided by most, if not all, implementations, it
would enhance the value of Ada to the programmer. Then we'd be off in other
newsgroups asking "I can do this in Ada - how do I do it in your language?"
:-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Samuel T. Harris" <u61783@gsde.hou.us.ray.com> wrote in message
news:3AF6D040.FF71B782@gsde.hou.us.ray.com...

> Of course, there are other "standards" which are not part
> of the Ada standard. For instance, the POSIX Ada binding
> has been invaluable to me in writing portable code which
> requires facilities from the operating system.
>
> Since this is standardized by IEEE, I feel any particular
> need to include it as an Ada LRM annex.
>