Re: ada vs. cpp

["David Thompson" <david.thompson1@worldnet.att.net>]

Dmitry Kazakov <dmitry@elros.cbb-automation.de> wrote :
...
> Sorry, but Ada is one of rare languages which are able to manipulate
> strings allocated on the stack. IMO strings are indeed one of Ada
> strengths, especially if you need an efficient parsing code. ...

COBOL, post-1977 (IIRC) versions of Fortran, and (standard) Pascal
support ordinary local (or global/static) variables containing some
(fixed) number of characters treated (to greater or lesser extent)
as character strings.  Many Pascals support counted strings
(that is, variable up to a declared limit) as an extension.  Fortran
and later Pascal allow a subprogram parameter to accept string
arguments of different (fixed) sizes, a limited kind of genericity.
(On most separate-compilation implementations and even some
without you can cheat and access outside the declared bound(s)
or length of a parameter and it always works right as long as it
is within the actual argument, but this is not formally a feature
except in the BCPL-C lineage where an array parameter is
_defined_ to actually be a pointer with the bound discarded.)
PL/1 supports CHAR(n) fixed-length and VARYING variables,
and generic-length parameters.  FWIW SQL also has fixed
and variable length character string data types; true SQL has
no local or "stack" variables of any type, but SQLoid PLs
like Sybase/M$ T-SQL and Oracle PL/SQL do.

C (and C++) can locally or statically allocate a char array
and treat it as a string given the null-termination convention;
in C++ a user or 3rdparty class could do fixed and/or variable
strings like all those above, including generic-length using a
templated proxy, though none are provided by the standard.
In C99 (not yet widely implemented) or GNU C a local array
variable (char or otherwise) can have a bound determined at
the equivalent of elaboration, and PL/1 has always had this.

Perhaps you meant to say C is the only widespread 3GL
(besides arguably FORTH and maybe early BASIC?) that
_didn't_ have character strings as an "official" datatype :-?
In this area (as others) Ada did a good job of collecting,
organizing, and making uniform pretty much all the functions
available in other 3GLs, but did not break significant new ground.
Which I hasten to say is still a valuable and even vital contribution.

>
> In any case, as many have pointed, it is a bit ridiculous to compare
> Ada's strings with C++ having no strings at all.
>
As previously noted C++ std::string is closely comparable
to Ada.Strings.Unbounded (and dynamically allocated).

--
- David.Thompson 1 now at worldnet.att.net