Re: DOS Options

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Charles H. Sampson" <csampson@inetworld.net> wrote in message
news:1i9d4ab.twgszk4zp5evN%csampson@inetworld.net...
...
>      This has the effect that it's still necessary to write a parser for
> Argument (1), something I thought Ada.Command_Line might be taking care
> of.  I'm talking about the case of multiple slash-headed options jammed
> against the command:
>
>         command/x/y/z
>
> I was hoping that Ada.Command_Line would return "/x" as Argument (1),
> "/y" as Argument (2), etc.
>
>      Is the GNAT implementation a reasonable one?  Knowing some of the
> people at ACT, I suspect that they researched it fully and are doing
> exactly what is expected for a DOS program.

Ada.Command_Line is a thinly-veiled wrapper on the normal C "argv/argc"
mechanism. I think most Ada compilers simply copy that mechanism (that's
pretty much a requirement on Unix, and it is better for portability on all
platforms). The fact that that mechanism isn't very useful is not considered
relevant. (And yes, for the record, Janus/Ada does exactly that for
Ada.Command_Line. We don't even bother to use Ada.Command_Line for the
command line processing of our compiler and tools; it is just as easy to
process starting from the original string.)

                       Randy.