Re: Separate type for byte arrays

["Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.not.jrcarter@acm.not.spam.org>]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> 
> I'm not interested in machines which use strange character sets such
> as EBCDIC, or machines whose storage unit or stream element size is
> not 8 bit.

It's not clear what you're asking. I would think all low-level I/O would 
be done in terms of bytes/storage elements/stream elements; anything 
else (such as String) would be a higher-level abstraction on top of this.

Anyway, given an 8-bit machine, you probably want 
System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Array or 
Ada.Streams.Stream_Element_Array rather than your own byte array type. 
Note that conversions to and from Storage_Array can be done with 
Ada.Storage_IO, avoiding Unchecked_Conversion. Similar things can be 
done with Streams, but it takes a bit more work than using Storage_IO.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"All citizens will be required to change their underwear
every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside,
so we can check."
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