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From: Caffeine Junky <nospam@hotmail.com>
Subject: Ada Strings Libraries for the clueless.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:30401
Date: 2002-11-05T21:40:26+00:00
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Recently I've actually taken the time to peruse the Ada.Strings section
of the Ada LRM. Lot's of nifty functions there, although I'm somewhat
fuzzy on what exactly they do. Probably because I havent bothered to play
with Strings at all until recently. Example..

Ada.Strings.Fixed

	function Index (Source : in String; Pattern : in String;
				 Going : in Direction := Forward;
				 Mapping : in Maps.Character_Mapping := Maps.Identity)
	return Natural;


Now, the gist of this function is pretty clear. It looks at a String and
returns the number of how many Characters are in the string(I'm
assuming.) But what's this "Pattern" string I'm supposed to pass to it? 
Does it only count the characters in the String that match the Pattern given
in the Pattern variable?

Now, to be fair, %95 of this section of the LRM is self-explanatory and
pretty simple to understand. I'm just running into a few things here and
there that are somewhat ambiguous. Or maybe I'm just dim-witted or low on
Caffiene at the moment.

Note: I'm focusing on the Strings libraries at the moment cause I'm
teaching myself to write very stable and fast buffers/pipes specifically
for text. "But Junky, why not make them generic buffers for everything?"
Because that's not what I'm doing right now. Heh.

I dont really need a tutorial on this, just a quick run down on what
these functions are really asking for.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Caffiene Junky
Caffinated Corps.