Re: output of enumeration types

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

"Staszek Goldstein" <goldstei@math.uni.lodz.pl> writes:

> This 

please quote enough so we can tell what you are refering to.

> is also a nice idea, although for converting a string you still need
> a function like the one given by Stephen Leake. It seems to me that
> it should be possible to output the roman number as easily as it is
> to output a string - there is no difference between the literals,
> they both look exactly the same.

As far as I can see, it is "just as easy". There is a package, that
someone wrote, that does text output for type String. Since you are
writing a new type, you need to write the output package for that as
well. Once that is done, both are "just as easy" for anyone else to
use.

Note that Character has a special place in this discussion, since by
definition it is what gets written to a "text" file.

So to do "output" with Roman_Number, you must specify some way to
convert its components to Character.

Here's another tidbit that points out why "universal character" wont
solve this problem:

   type Roman_Digit is (Foo,'V','X','L','C','D','M');

is a perfectly legal type declaration!

-- 
-- Stephe