Re: C-style 'union' in Ada?

[tmoran@acm.org]

>record that I want to hold a pointer to a buffer which is either a String
>or Wide_String, ...
>...  In the package I'm designing, I don't care whether it is a
>String or Wide_String, I will just pass it to the file I/O packages
>(stream, in this case).  In C, I would:
  How *do* you tell which it is?  Or do you really truly neither know
nor care?  If so, then the pointer itself is the abstraction
level - it's a black box of bits.  It could just as well be an
integer, or an array of bytes, whatever.
  If you do have a way to tell, can you incorporate that as a
discriminant in a variant record?  eg.

  type string_desc(Is_Wide : Boolean) is record
    length : Interfaces.C.Unsigned_Long;
    case Is_Wide is
      when True =>
        ansi_string : String_Desc;
      when False =>
        wide_string : Wide_String_Desc;
    end case;
  end record;

of course
struct
    {
    ...
    string_desc    file_name;
    ...
    } some_struct;
will in turn need a discriminant to pass along:
  type some_struct(Uses_Wide_String : Boolean) is record
    ...
    file_name : string_desc(Is_Wide => Uses_Wide_String);
    ...
  end record;

It's possible that tagged types would be appropriate.  An abstract
parent type with primitive procedures declared for those operations
that treat an object of the type as a black box, and abstract
primitives for those operations that *must* be declared separately
depending on the child type being ansi_string or wide_string.