Re: Using Spawn in Win2K

["Dave Head" <headdp@nswc.navy.mil>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:udgb1hnacmmh49@corp.supernews.com...
> Dave Head wrote in message ...
> >Thanks.
> >
> >I did find CMD.  But this is going to make it more fun to produce
> something
> >for people with the different OS's and have it work the same...
> command.com
> >wants to give 8X3 filenames no matter what.  CMD does long filenames,
> no
> >problem, and by default too.
> >
> >It must be quitting time somewhere in the world...
>
> Trying to use "spawn" to get a list of files seems like killing a flea
> with a cannon.

I've been known to do that... I buy cars with big engines, too... <G>

 And, as you've found out, its not in the least portable
> (even to different versions of windows). There are lots of good uses for
> Spawn (or 'Prog_Call' as it is called in Janus/Ada, ...), but this isn't
> one of them.

OK.


> If you need to find a list of information about files in a directory,
> you are best off using a package designed for the purpose. The first
> choice would be Ada.Directories, but it probably will be a few years
> before that is generally available. But there are a lot of other choices
> available:


> -- Claw.Directories: Windows-specific. Works on any Ada compiler for
> Windows. (But it is tied into Claw, so if you're using a different GUI,
> or no GUI, it may be a bad choice.)

Isn't that tied to $$$.  And, no gui - its too simple - a GUI would be
overkill.

> -- Compiler-specific:
>    Gnat.Directories: Gnat-specific. Works (supposedly) on any Gnat
> supported OS. Every other Ada compiler has such a library as well.

Found G-direop.ads .. adb.  OK, but it appears as if one needs to

1) Open the directory (how to open the current directory?  Research here -
I'm just getting started with this.  Prolly Get_Current_Dir.  Yeah - duh...)
2) Use procedure Read in a loop until it finds the end, while
3) Storing each file name into the dos file I wanted.
4) Close the file

That is slightly more complicated.  I'll probably do it for the portability.
Thanks for the info.  I guess I didn't read g-direop.ads closely enough to
notice you could do that.  Of course, I approached it _wanting_ to do "dir/b
>XXX.XXX" which seemed awful simple at the time. <G>

> You also could use Florist or other of the other OS-interface packages.

Web search in order - just getting started with gnat/dos/windows and haven't
heard of these yet.

> Any of these choices would be less platform-specific than using Spawn.

Oh, yeah...  I'll likely stick with the gnat stuff, tho

Thanks again,

Dave Head

>
>             Randy Brukardt.