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From: tmoran@acm.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Hints for networking
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> Also, I've my doubts about streams, because in the past I've tried them
> to write files and in Gnat I couldn't manage to output exact sized types
> except uncheckedconverting
  Streams can be quite convenient, but they are like programming without
rep clauses.  If the representation doesn't matter, fine.  If it does,
you have to write your own 'read/'write routines to and from
Stream_Element_Array.  But you probably want your IO to be in terms of
objects at a higher level than Integer or Boolean, etc, so you would
want to write your own Some_Record 'Write routines anyway.
At the low level, your code will contain things like
  type Some_Record is record
  ...
  subtype External_Form_Some_Record is Ada.Streams.Stream_Element_Array(1 .. 6);
  function External_Some_Record is new Ada.Unchecked_Conversion
    (Source=>Some_Record, Target=>External_Form_Some_Record);
but at higher levels writing a complex object just becomes a series of
calls to 'Write on lower level subrecords, and, if there's nothing fancy
going on, you can let the compiler create the series of subrecord 'Writes.