Re: Replacement for Text_IO? (was Re: C bug of the day)

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <dstanbro-3418E9.11564717062003@mec2.bigpond.net.au>, Dale Stanbrough <dstanbro@bigpond.net.au> writes:
> Gautier Write-only wrote:
> 
>> Dale Stanbrough:
>> 
>> > Everyone laments the slowness of Text_IO,
>> 
>> Who ? Who ?
> 
> Are you an owl? I'm sure one "who?" would do.
> 
> Ok, it was a bit of hyperbole. -I- don't like the slowness of Text_IO :-)

Could that be due to your compiler and operating system ?

The record-oriented nature of Text_IO seems to match nicely the features
of RMS on VMS.  Personally the only Ada compiler from which I have used
it is VAX/DEC/Compaq Ada.

> "Text_IO is convenient for small scale or occasional use for small
>  amounts of formatted output (compare it to ACCEPT and DISPLAY use
>  in COBOL). It is not the appropriate interface for large scale I/O
>  where performance is critical."

> Why not -make- it suitable for large scale I/O? Why not ensure that
> everyone who wants to do some I/O doesn't have the thought in the 
> back of their head "shouldn't really use text_io because it doesn't
> scale".

Really large scale IO should not use a line-oriented package.  In fact
even $QIO is inadequate and one should use $IO_PERFORM, which requires
at least ASTs for efficiency and might require Ada tasking.  So some
solution which works for one operating system would not work for others.

So your particular situation might require better performance, but how
much better and how to achieve it is going to be quite OS-specific.