Re: Please review and comment

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <9k9a46$8f1$1@news.huji.ac.il>, Ehud Lamm says...
>
>think of as more advanced. In my idiom list what  I say about strings is
>"use Ada.Strings.*" I alos have a docuement called "intro to Ada strings"
>(this was online on my previous site, I am going to put it up again
>sometime. Meanwhile, I can mail it if anyone wants. It is for complete
>beginners).

I suspect I've seen it before (it sounds familiar). But you can send it along if
you like.

I would actually tell beginners to use perfectly-sized strings, and only resort
to Ada.Strings.* when the above can't be easily done. Newbies can indeed be
pointed at the spec for Ada.Strings.Unbounded without much other explanatory
text. Its the techniques for creating and dealing with perfectly-sized strings
in Ada that really need to be shown.

Its true that Strings are, in a way, just a special case of dealing with
unbounded arrays. However, they are also the case that a newbie is most likely
to stumble across first. Get them comfortable with strings, then show them that
*any* array can be used this way, and watch the mental lightbulb go on. Its
kinda fun whenever I do it.

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