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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Why no Ada.Wide_Directories?
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:13:54 +0200
Organization: cbb software GmbH
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Date: 2011-10-21T15:13:54+02:00
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On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:25:39 +0200, J-P. Rosen wrote:

> But that is exactly what Wide_Wide_String is!

Not really. Wide_Wide_String is one possible implementation of logical
Unicode string. There can be other implementations, e.g. String,
Wide_String, UTF8_String, UTF16_String, EBCDIC_String, ASCII_String... All
these implementation must be interchangeable and implement same logical
string interface. The same applies to unbouded and fixed length strings.

> Come on! That's ultra-purism that brings zero improvement in practice.

On the contrary:

1. It would reduce by the factor 10 the number of packages;

2. It would statically ensure that the encoding is handled correctly. (I
would bet that almost any Ada program is broken with that regard);

3. It would free the programmer from the burden of premature optimization;

4. It would make design of Ada bindings much simpler and safer. E.g.
C_String could be an implementation of logical Unicode string compatible
with null-terminated C strings.

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