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From: "Nick Roberts" <nick.roberts@acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: reading a text file into a string
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:18:33 +0100
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On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:59:06 +0100, Marius Amado Alves  
<amado.alves@netcabo.pt> wrote:

> "...is there a more prefered method of reading in a whole text file?"
>
> The preference depends.

That's true, there are many ways to skin a cat, and how you read and  
process the file will very much depend on what you are trying to do.

> The methods are:
>
> - declare a string S of size equal to the file size and
> then call a standard string reading procedure with S as
> the out parameter

The problem with this idea is that there is no standard way to determine  
the size of a text file. For some kinds of text 'file' (such as a device  
or pipe), it may not be possible to tell in advance by any means.

> - use stream attributes 'Read, 'Input of type String and
> facilities in Ada.Streams.Stream_IO

I think this is a terrible idea, unless you know what the character  
encoding is, and wish to do the decoding yourself!

-- 
Nick Roberts