Re: Hiding a type

["Frank J. Lhota" <NOSPAM.FrankLho@rcn.com>]

> I don't want to expose the name Private_Type_Ptr because I know that it
> might change in the future.  I know it sounds silly so it's probably
> just poor planning on my part.

It doesn't sound silly, it is always a good idea to hide implementation
details. On the other hand, Private_Type_Ptr as declared in your code
snippet is not exposed, since it appears in the private portion of the Test
package. The only units exposed to the private part of Test is the
cooresponding package body, and any child package of Test. The clients of
Test will not see this definition.

My recommendation would be to skip the definition of Private_Type_Ptr
entirely, and define Public_Name as the access type:

package Test is
     type Public_Name is limited private;
     function Initialize( File_Name : String ) return Public_Name;
     procedure Process( Input : Public_Name );
private
     type Private_Type is record ... end record;
     type Public_Name is access all Private_Type;
end Test;