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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Platform portable support of heir. file systems
Date: 1996/12/19
Message-ID: <EACHUS.96Dec19142707@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 204962535
references: <01bbec7f$453edcd0$24af1486@pc-phw>
organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-12-19T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <01bbec7f$453edcd0$24af1486@pc-phw> "Paul Whittington" <paul@sage.inel.gov> writes:

  > I was just working on one of our support packages that interfaces to the
  > host OS to do file I/O and can't find any support in the Ada Annex set for
  > a portable way of accessing heir. file systems.  I need things like
  > "MakeDirectory", "RemoveDirectory", etc.  

  > Am I missing something, or is it the case that there is no Ada Annex
  > covering this very common need?

  > If there is no Annex support, is the ARA working on some kind of industry
  > agreement about such things?

  There is a standard interface for such things: P1003.5 the POSIX Ada
Binding.  Not all OSes can support it, but it would be
counterproductive to have another "standard."

  On the other hand complete standard Ada bindings to APIs are a very
good idea, but don't belong in the Ada standard since they are OS
specific.  There exist good thin Ada bindings to most standard
operating systems.  Programs which use those thin bindings in
instead of the POSIX binding are of course less portable.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...