Re: returning a value from tasking??

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

Randy asks how to read a character within three seconds, or quit the
attempt. 

Obviously we should not do his assignment for him, but the general
advice in this situation is to make sure you understand the tools
you are using. In this case, if you are using tasking, it is not
good enough to piece together a vague approximation based on things
people have showed you. You need to first assemble a reasonably 
complete knowledge of how tasking works from an appropriate text
book. In this case obviously the solution is a timed entry call
followed by a conditional abort, but you need to know what these
are to use them. if you were using Ada 95 rather than the
obsolescent Ada 83, you could use asyncrhonous transfer of
control to achieve the conditional abort.