Re: Directory listings and path names

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net>]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Marin David Condic wrote:
> Not strictly true. Accessing a file system rather implies that there *is* a
> file system and hence something vaguely resembling an OS that accesses it.
> Tasking, OTOH, can exist on a bare-silicon platform with nothing more than
> some sort of Ada RTK that supports the scheduling. (Unless we want to insist
> that anything at least as sophisticated as an Ada RTK can be considered an
> "Operating System".)

You're just nitpicking. The important point is not whether file system
access is provided by the core language but whether it is in the standard.
Ada has an Information Systems annex but no hierarchical file systems
annex. I think the latter is at least as important as the former. Sure,
its easy enough to come up with a package but we all understand the
benefit of a standard, don't we.

Anyways, I know about the AI and I'm just making noise :-). I usually make
noise about things which will sadly never change about Ada. However, this
is really low hanging fruit and it is a shame that we don't have it now!

-- Brian