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From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)
Subject: Re: Help
Date: 1996/11/19
Message-ID: <mheaney-ya023280001911960936000001@news.ni.net>#1/1
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references: <328C2BF5.1348@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>
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organization: Estormza Software
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newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-11-19T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <328C2BF5.1348@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>, "Alexander B.
Schmidt" <schmiale@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>does anybody know how to declare a string of variable length in Ada 
>83? Declaring a variable of type String like
>str: STRING(1..20);
>and assigning a string like
>str := "a String" 
>results in a constraint error if the length of the string is not equal 
>to 20.
>Is it possible to declare strings with a maximum length which accept 
>the assignment of shorter strings too?

The technique I often use in Ada 83 is to use a discriminated record, as
follows:

subtype String_Buffer_Length_Range is Natural range 0 .. 20;

type String_Buffer (Length : String_Buffer_Length_Range := 0) is
   record
      Text : String (1 .. Length);
   end record;

function "+" (Text : String) return String_Buffer is
   subtype Slided is String (1 .. Text'Length);
begin
   return (Text'Length, Slided (Text));
end;

Now, given those definitions, I can do this:

declare
   The_String : String_Buffer;
begin
   The_String := +"Robert Dewar";
   The_String := +"Norm";
   The_String := +"Ada";
  
When you refer to the string, you don't need to apply an index constraint, ie

   Put_Line (The_String.Text); 
   -- The_String.Length worth of characters, not 20

This is also how to make a ragged array in Ada 83; just declare an array of
String_Buffer.

M.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
mheaney@ni.net
(818) 985-1271