Re: Exclusive file access

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 18:34:12 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
> news:mvil865iebyb$.1of2shk5faacq$.dlg@40tude.net...
> ...
>>> As long as you don't use Wide_String—if you do use that, things get 
>>> rather messy.
>>
>> Both are messy. Character and Ada.Text_IO was designed prior to Unicode.
>> Later amendments were futile attempts to repair what needed no repair.
> 
> I would have said: "Later amendments were futile attempts to repair what 
> needed replacement." since we have no choice but to support modern character 
> sets in Ada. But the way to do that isn't by abandoning strong typing 
> (Ada.Strings.UTF_Encoding) or by duplicating everything many times 
> (Wide_Wide_String, which naturally leads to Wide_Wide_Text_IO which leads to 
> Wide_Wide_Open which leads to Wide_Wide_Madness).

Agreed

> Since a sensible solution can't be done compatibility, we needed to start 
> over -- but that's never had appropriate traction.

And good so, because without reworking the type system no reasonable
solution is impossible.

Either:

a. Encoding must be an interface, a view, of the string type decoupled from
its internal representation.

b. If the representation is the encoding, then the interface of an array of
characters must still be available.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de