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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Help me parse a long character
Date: 1997/11/03
Message-ID: <dewar.878569374@merv>#1/1
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References: <01BCE863.95E32930.skj@acm.org>
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Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-11-03T00:00:00+00:00
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Simon said

<<Use the Index function in Ada.Strings.Fixed, like so: the first bit will
get you the last name, and then the first name. You can then use the
resulting four values to substring your original to get two shorter
strings. Note this relies on at least one space between LASTNAME and
FIRSTNAME and a trailing space after FIRSTNAME - if this is not the case
then you'll have to add some code :)>>

If you are using GNAT, an interesting alternative is to use the pattern
matching routines provided in GNAT.Spitbol and its children. For a 
tutorial on the use of this facility, see file g-spipat.ads which
contains a 550 line section called "Pattern Matching Tutorial",
including some examples.

In general when using GNAT, be sure to be aware that more and more useful
stuff appears in the GNAT hierarchy in each release. Each of these packages
is designed to be fully documented int he corresponding spec file, so
browsing g-*.ads is well worth while.

Note that these are all GPL'ed packages, and thus can in some cases be used
with other Ada 95 compilers, but they are planned for use with GNAT, and in
several cases, including the pattern matching stuff, make use of implementation
dependent features (the use of Unrestricted_Access in particular is pretty
fundamental in GNAT.Spitbol.Patterns, both at the user level and at the
implementation level.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Note: For supported customers of ACT, the support fully extends to all
packages provided in the GNAT hierarchy.