Re: array of strings in a function

["Jeff C," <nolongersafeto@userealemailsniff.com>]

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"Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:3F8CB712.2070808@comcast.net...
> Antonio Mart�nez wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to pass to a function an argument. The argument is an
> > array range <> of Strings (unbounded array).
>
> > number of string literals is unknown by the function. And the
> > length of every string is unknown as well.
>
> > How do I work with unbound strings?
>
> You can create an array of Unbounded_String (found in
> Ada.Strings.Unbounded).  Or you can use the package below.  Note that in
> either case, you are going to have to create an array object, put the
> strings in it, and then pass that to the array.  With the package below
> your example above:
>

Hmm.. Robert, I am not sure why you would have to create the array and then
put the strings in it then pass
the array (ok, I agree that is what is really going to happen...but you can
hide it)

with Ada.Strings.Unbounded;
with Text_IO;

procedure AnotherWay is

  function "-"(Item : in String) return
Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Unbounded_String renames
Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_Unbounded_String;
  function "-"(Item : in Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Unbounded_String) return
String renames Ada.Strings.Unbounded.To_String;

  type Unbounded_String_Array is array (Integer range <>) of
Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Unbounded_String;

  procedure Something (Data : in Unbounded_String_Array) is

  begin
    for I in Data'range loop
      Text_IO.Put_Line(-Data(I));
    end loop;
  end Something;

begin

  Something((-"Hello", -", I'm", -" the function"));

end AnotherWay;


Now, having said and done this....I agree with Robert that this is not a
normal Ada idiom
so the original poster should really think about whether or not you want to
do this.
While the code I provided above will actually work, it is really a bad idea
so if
you can look at your problem space in a different manner, I would really
recommend
against doing this.


Also one more note, the original post talked about writing a function to do
something but the example
(in the original post) was actually a procedure.