From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)
Subject: Re: 'first of strings returned from a function should be 1?
Date: 1997/07/27
Date: 1997-07-27T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <mheaney-ya023680002707971114240001@news.ni.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 01bc9a76$459c2250$4c8371a5@dhoossr
In article <01bc9a76$459c2250$4c8371a5@dhoossr>, "David C. Hoos, Sr."
<david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com> wrote:
>From my own experience, I know that it is easy to write a poor function
>returning a string result of which the first subscript is not 1,
Poor is a relative term. For some abstractions, returning a string whose
lower index is not 1 might make more sense.
In the example I gave,
function To_Uppercase (S : String) return String;
one could argue that the return value should have the same bounds as the
input string S (which doesn't necessarily have 1 as the lower bound).
Consider a sequence:
generic
type Sequence_Item is private;
type Sequence_Item_Array is
array (Positive range <>) of Sequence_Item;
package Sequences_G is
type Root_Sequence is abstract tagged private;
function Subsequence
(Sequence : Root_Sequence;
First : Positive;
Last : Positive) return Sequence_Item_Array;
Surely, the array returned by this function would have First, not 1, as its
lower bound.
>and I
>always make the effort to slice (if necessary) the result into the range 1
>. result'length, but if you're using
>something you can't change, then something like
>New_Result (1 .. Result_String'length) :=
>Result_String(Result_String'first .. result_String'first +
>Result_String'length -1)
>will do the job.
Why not
Result_String'Last,
instead of
Result_String'First + Result_String'Length - 1 ?
And why not
:= Result_String
instead of
:= Result_String (Result_STring'First .. Result_String'Last) ?
Indeed, why bother with the copy at all:
declare
Result_String : constant String := f (...);
subtype Slid is String (1 .. Result_String'Length);
begin
if Slid (Result_String)(1) then
Even if you do decide to make a copy, why not do it in the declarative region:
declare
Result_String_Unslid : constant String := f (...);
subtype Slid is String (1 .. Result_String_Unslid'Length);
Result_String : constant String := Slid (Result_String_Unslid);
begin
if Result_String (1) ...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
<mailto:matthew_heaney@acm.org>
(818) 985-1271
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1997-07-27 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <5rcaqi$le8$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
1997-07-26 0:00 ` 'first of strings returned from a function should be 1? Matthew Heaney
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1997-07-27 0:00 ` David C. Hoos, Sr.
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Simon Wright
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1997-07-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney [this message]
1997-07-28 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-07-29 0:00 ` Anonymous
1997-07-30 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1997-07-30 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
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