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From: Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org>
Subject: Re: String to Integer conversion?
Date: 1998/08/02
Message-ID: <m3g1fgusb8.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>#1/1
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 00:38:36 PDT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-08-02T00:00:00+00:00
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dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> <<Fair enough, but it would have been helpful to have a predefined
> instantiation, so that everyone (ie working programmers like me) can
> share the same one.
> >>
> 
> Why?

Perhaps this is just an Ada 83 problem, because that version of Ada
didn't have the attributes Duration'Image and Duration'Value.  Without
those attributes, there is a real need for a Duration_IO.

It may indeed be the case the neophyte programmers in a class-room
setting don't require the use of Duration.  But they can't avoid using a
delay statement forever.

In my experience, the need for manipulation of Duration strings is
_very_ common.  One thing I do quite often is to translate an
environment variable that represents the value of an entry call delay,
for example, or a timeout for I/O to an external device.  This way I can
tune delays and timeouts without recompiling anything.