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Subject: Running programs using ADA
From: Hans Vlems <hvlems@freenet.de>
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Date: 2012-11-29T23:56:13-08:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Our company will move its IT operation to another datacentre. The new
provider doesn't allow access to the command prompt (cmd.exe, it's a
Windows setup). We use aprox. 10 programs that are run from the
command prompt. All software is written in C; the compiler is mingw
(regularly updated). The first attempt was a program, in C, that shows
the user a menu. The user types a single digit and a program is run.
The C program relies on the system() function.
The problem is that the new environment uses Windows on a 64 bit
platform. mingw uses Microsoft's libraries and either I'm just too
dumb to understand that new stuff or system() is broken.
Now mingw also includes support for ADA. The last time I wrote
something in ADA was in 1984. Anyway, ADA looks a lot more like Algol
than C so I hope that ADA may help me here. More specifically: does
ADA have support for a function similar to C's system()?

Example:

int main(void)
{
   int retval;
   retval=system("copy h:\*.* g:\");
   printf("return value %d\n",retval);
   return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Regards,
Hans Vlems

PS
the example lacks #include statements so won't compile