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From: "David C. Hoos, Sr." <david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com>
Subject: Re: Strings and reading from a file
Date: 1999/05/15
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Date: 1999-05-15T00:00:00+00:00
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Keith Thompson <kst@cts.com> wrote in message
news:yecyairi5mm.fsf@king.cts.com...
> I wrote:
> > > Shouldn't the default for File be Ada.Text_IO.Current_Input rather
> > > than Ada.Text_IO.Standard_Input?  (Not that I've ever understood the
> > > need for the distinction, but we might as well be consistent.)
>
> "David C. Hoos, Sr." <david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com> replied:
> > Current_Input is switchable from file to file by a running program,
> > whereas Standard_Input is fixed from the program's perspective.
>
> I know what it does, but I question the wisdom of having it in the
> standard.  I don't think I've ever seen a call to Set_Input or
> Set_Output outside a test program.
>
> Yes, it can be handy to have a quick and dirty way to redirect default
> input and output within a program, but I'd much rather use another
> File_Type object or parameter than mess around with the global state
> of Ada.Text_IO.  After all, that's why there are versions of Put_Line,
> Get_Line, etc. that take File_Type parameters.
>
Well, I saw it used quite a lot one  program, and it brought to light
that there was an error in the compiler vendor's implementation of
Text_IO;
We made a fix to the implementation, and submitted it to the vendor,
who rejected our solution because of some AI (I don't remember the number).

After four years of waiting, I gave up on the vendor ever fixing it.
I'm no longer on that program, but I think they're still using my
"workaround."