Re: S-expression I/O in Ada

[Jeffrey Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>]

> Natacha Kerensikova<lithiumcat@gmail.com>  writes:
>
> For Jeffry Carter (and anybody interested in helping me understand the
> Ada way): here is how it looks like when I haven't thought much about
> it. Notice that all this is completely from the point of view of the
> application using the package, with very few implementation choices.
> If I knew Ada, wouldn't these explanations be pretty much the contents
> of the specification file, with about everything from the body being
> still to invent? How Ada-ish is that thought process?

In general, describing it from the point of view of "the application using the 
package" (often referred to as "the client") is the purpose of the 
specification. The body is for the implementation, usually best left until the 
specification is finished.

On the other hand, your proposed operations seem unnecessarily low level for the 
client. You have an internal representation, which is probably hidden from the 
client, and an external representation, and operations to write an object of the 
internal representation to that external representation and read the external 
representation to create an object of the internal representation. Thus, your 
client should probably invoke a single operation to write an object, and another 
single operation to read.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Run away! Run away!"
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
58

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