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From: Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: for S'Image use Func??
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 15:48:19 +0000 (UTC)
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Robert A Duff expounded in news:wccpr17yeji.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com:

> And teaching beginners how to instantiate generics,
> when there's a simple 'Image feature, is not a good idea.
> 
> - Bob

I know how to "instantiate generics". The problem is
that they don't always do what I want. Add to that, 
the reluctance to add bloat when there are many types 
involved. 

My biggest gripe though is with it's handling of
hexadecimal.

In C, I can write:

  sprintf(buf,"%08lX",lngval);

and get my 8 digit hex value, with leading zeros (if
I want it). But with the Ada supplied generics, 
I have to remove the "16#" and "#" from
the result.  So that always has me thinking, 
"what were they thinking?" as well.  It sometimes seems 
that I'm always having to wrap something that the Ada 
standard library gives me.

Another thing that bugs me is that the Ada.Text_IO
will not return a LF character (like getchar() in C).

IMO, there needs to be a "modernized" Ada text I/O
facility. IOW something like a thick binding for the C 
I/O facilities but designed in Ada terms - not C terms.

I know there are different flavours of C bindings for 
this, but without recalling the specific issues involved, 
I've never been real keen about using them, except as
a last resort.

Warren