Re: Dynamic array allocation and STL equivalents?

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

brian.b.mcguinness@lmco.com wrote:

> I would like to write a few Ada programs and play around with the
> language a bit.  From the mid 1980s through the early 1990s I wrote
> programs in Borland Turbo Pascal 3 through 6, which I was quite fond
> of, so I shouldn't have much trouble picking up Ada, which has a
> similar syntax.  But there are a few things I don't know how to do.
> For one thing, I have looked through the Barnes book, the pages of
> which have turned tan with age, and online, but can't find any
> information on how to allocate arrays dynamically; there seems to be no
> equivalent to the C malloc() function or the C++ dimensioned new.  If
> someone would tell me how to do this, I would appreciate it.

Nobody addressed this, so I'll point out a simple way to create a 
dynamically sized array in Ada. I'll use the predefined array type 
String for simplicity:

Dynamic_Array : declare
    S : String (1 .. N);
begin -- Dynamic_Array
    -- Do something with S here
end Dynamic_Array;

N can come from the command line, input, a function, or anything else. 
There's no messing with pointers, no possibility of memory leaks or 
buffer overflows.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"If you think you got a nasty taunting this time,
you ain't heard nothing yet!"
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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