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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Textedit and txt
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 16:23:35 -0500
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation
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Date: 2015-05-06T16:23:35-05:00
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<brbarkstrom@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:51c639dd-a48c-4130-becd-750cb23094da@googlegroups.com...
On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 7:52:05 AM UTC-4, Laurent wrote:
>> Thanks for the hint. Why hide that in the preferences? Apple has 
>> sometimes strange ideas. Terminal an pico works too. Not really a fan of 
>> emacs/aquamacs. Tried once to learn mozart oz as language and they used 
>> emacs as ide. Didn't really work for me so I gave up.

>I'd suggest taking a look at the Reference Manual section on
>the Bounded_Strings package.  You can create a default Bounded_String
>length in a package (say named Common_Defs.ads) using
>
>  Std_Vstring_Length  : constant :=  256;
>  package VString     is new
>    Ada.Strings.Bounded.Generic_Bounded_Length(Std_Vstring_Length);

On top of this suggestion, I'd suggest defining the conversion operator (AKA 
unary plus) appropriately:

   function "+" (Right : VString.Bounded_String) return String renames 
VString.To_String;
   function "+" (Right : String) return VString.Bounded_String renames 
VString.To_Bounded_String;

Then you can write:

         Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("read code: "
                               & (+Temp_Record.Code_SIL));

instead of:

         Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line ("read code: "
                               & Codes.To_String (Temp_Record.Code_SIL));

Note that some people hate using "+" this way, because they think it has 
something to do with numerics. We really should have something non-specific 
(say an operator "#"), but the ARG is always split between people that think 
we already have such an operator ("+") and thus we don't need another one 
and those that are repulsed by using "+" this way. (Getting these put into 
the packages themselves failed for similar reasons. Grumble.)

In any case, I think Bounded_String and Unbounded_String are unusable 
without these definitions. So you either have to swallow "+" or forget the 
packages altogether. Neither is appealing. (I'd prefer a completely 
different design for both of these packages, so we could add some mechanism 
to allow direct conversions, but that's likely too radical.)

                                   Randy.