Re: Get_Line

["Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com>]

"Matthew Heaney" <mheaney@on2.com> wrote in message
news:us63nof66esp1b@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:apuqd0$103i$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu...
> >
> > Would you be happy with the following instead?
> >
> > type Line is private;
> >
> > procedure Get_Line (File : File_Type; Item : out Line);
> >
>
> You already have a resizable string type, so you'd be better off using
that.
> The easiest solution would be to create a child of Ada.Strings.Unbounded:

The line type wasn't meant to be resizeable like Unbounded_String it was
meant to only resize at an input read.

> The closest thing in Ada is to use an access type:
>
> type Line_Type is private;
>
> type String_Access is access all String;
>
> function To_String_Access (Line : Line_Type) return String_Access;
>
> and then you could:
>
> declare
>    S : String renames To_String_Access (Line).all;  --no copying
> begin
>
> You could tighten the safety by being able to decorate the access type,
e.g.
>
> type String_Access (<>) is limited access all String;
>
> which would prevent users from holding on to a copy of the access value
> returned by the selector function (forcing them to do a rename, as above).

Yes that would a better approach.  I was just brainstorming.  Thank you for
your input.

-CRM