Re: Ada Code Formatting

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Fergus said

"I'd suggest getting GNU diff, and using `diff -w',
which ignores whitespace."

(to compare reformatted sources)

This does not work fully, since, as I mentioned in a previous post, most
diff programs, inclufding GNU diff, do not ignore line feeds, so if the
reformatting involves changing the position of line feeds, as is common,
this will not be sufficient to suppress the effects of reformatting.

Also, if comments have been reformatted, the sequence of non-blank characters
changes, since the -- appears at different places.

A useful utility would be an Ada specific diff, with an option to ignore
white space, ignore line changes, ignore reformatting of comments, or
igore comments completely.

(it could even consider ABC and abc to be the same optionally, or
10 and 2#1010#)

So there's a nice little project for someone in an enthusiastic mood!