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From: =?utf-8?Q?Yannick_Duch=C3=AAne_=28Hibou57?=
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Practicalities of Ada for app development
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 05:46:48 +0200
Organization: Ada @ Home
Message-ID: <op.wfn4saddule2fv@douda-yannick>
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Date: 2012-06-10T05:46:48+02:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Le Sat, 09 Jun 2012 11:36:13 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  =

<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a =C3=A9crit:

> On Sat,  9 Jun 2012 11:25:05 +0200 (CEST), Nomen Nescio wrote:
>
>> wrp <i3text@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I develop small to medium sized tools. Tasks are mostly limited to
>>> text processing, database management, and simple visualization.
>>
>> Ada is lousy for text/string manipulation.
>
> Which is good, because there practically is no task, which required te=
xt
> string manipulation. You should parse strings in place without moving
> anything except the cursor. The same applies to the formatted output.

I have to agree a lot. That's what I did with a Pascal variant too (did =
 =

not knew Ada at that time, and still not ported to Ada), for a set of  =

applications running a lot of text processing (CGI). I avoided passing  =

strings everywhere, using references to strings and string ranges, movin=
g  =

start and end cursors, etc.

Passing strings is nice for modeling, but is better avoided when the mod=
el  =

is OK.

For another application which was more generating new text than parsing =
 =

existing text, I also had a strategy using call=E2=80=91back procedures =
to print  =

=E2=80=9Cthis and that=E2=80=9D instead of passing strings to a procedur=
e dedicated to  =

printing (you pass references to subprograms instead of passing strings)=
.  =

However, depending of the context, passing tagged types or else  =

association of a subprogram and a record, may be a better choice.

-- =

=E2=80=9CSyntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.=E2=80=9D [1]
=E2=80=9CStructured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.=
=E2=80=9D [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming =E2=80=94 Alan J. =E2=80=94 P. Yale Univers=
ity