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From: Natasha Kerensikova <lithiumcat@instinctive.eu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: How to declare a generic formal type "covered" by another?
Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 06:54:29 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2014-05-01T06:54:29+00:00
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Hello,

this a general question stemmed by a new idea on how to solve the
problem exposed in my previous thread (I wouldn't have started a new
thread if I knew my newsreader well enough to do so).

I'm not good enough with language-lawyer vocabulary (hence the quotes
around "covered" in the subject), so I'll write it mostly in Ada.
Basically I want two generic formal T and S, so that I can write:

   Access_To_T_Value := new S;

I too the verb "cover" from 4.8(3/1) to mean this relationship between S
and T, but I'm not sure how correct it is.

The context would look like that:

   generic
      type T (<>) is limited private;
   package References is

      type Exposed_Type is tagged private;

      generic
         type S is adequately declared;
      function Allocate return Exposed_Type;

   private
      type Internal_Access is access T;
      type Exposed_Type is new Ada.Finalization.Controlled with record
         Value : Internal_Access;
      end record;
   end References;

   package body References is
      function Allocate return Exposed_Type is
      begin
         return (Ada.Finalization.Controlled with
            Value => new S);
      end Allocate;
   end References;


So S would have to be a concrete constrained type, but looking at the
alternatives for "formal_type_definition", I can't see anything that
covers both S being a constrained version of T, and S being a concrete
tagged type belonging to class-wide T.

Is it possible, or am I hitting a limit of Ada generics?



Thanks for your help,
Natasha