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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Generic Zero Length Array
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:25:07 -0600
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Date: 2008-02-22T13:25:07-06:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"Egil H�vik" <egilhovik@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2446841a-8bb0-46bc-94ed-099e4e0ca74c@k2g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>On Feb 22, 2:31 pm, shaunpatter...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I have a bit of legacy code in my system that I am trying to remove
>> all warnings from.
>>
>> The package is a generic -- with:
>>
>> type Element is (<>);
>> type Element_List is array (Indexing range <>) of Element;
>>
>> I have been stumped by one compiler warning where one of the functions
>> needs to return a zero-length empty generic array:
...
>A new generic parameter Null_Element would do the trick, but
>that means changing code wherever the generic is used...
>
>type Element is (<>);
>type Element_List is array (Indexing range <>) of Element;
>Null_Element : Element;
>
>then you could rewrite the above code to
>
>if Error_Condition then
>  return Element_List'(Indexing'First..Indexing'First-1 => Null_Element);
>end if;

If you are not limited to Ada 95, you can use the <> here, and then you
don't need the extra generic parameter:

if Error_Condition then
  return Element_List'(Indexing'First..Indexing'First-1 => <>);
end if;

                           Randy.
--
~egilhh