Re: Directory listings and path names

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

I agree that it is really low hanging fruit to establish a package spec and
declare it to be a de facto standard. Especially for something that doesn't
involve a half-million lines of code to implement and can be reasonably
supported on most operating systems.

There's no reason that it has to even wait for a language revision. It could
be viewed this way: If the package spec outlined in the AI for file
manipulation is reasonably complete and the various Ada vendors simply
started shipping it with their product, then it effectively becomes an
informal part of the language. Doing so allows for some experimentation and
experience to be built up with it such that when the time comes to include
it in a future standard, it will be well understood and reliable.

I would go further to say that there are probably a large number of such
packages that could be candidates for such an inclusion. And I don't think
that they necessarily have to be in an annex of the ARM if the reigning view
is that it is too hard to write a formal specification that can be used for
validation. A reference implementation might be sufficient so long as it is
widely adopted. The point being that the more things that a developer can
leverage in building applications, the more useful the language becomes and
the easier it is to adopt. If other languages provide libraries of useful
stuff and Ada doesn't out of some sense of strict adherence to formal
validation, then other languages will get used and Ada will not. Why wait
for Ada0X?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Brian Rogoff" <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSF.4.40.0201250010340.88868-100000@bpr.best.vwh.net...
>
> Anyways, I know about the AI and I'm just making noise :-). I usually make
> noise about things which will sadly never change about Ada. However, this
> is really low hanging fruit and it is a shame that we don't have it now!
>