Re: functions, packages & characters

["Matthew Heaney" <mheaney@on2.com>]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in
message news:a55hpd$4cp$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Wait a minute...... I seem to recall a nifty example of how you could
return
> an arbitrary length string from a function that used Get/Get_Line (?) and
> recursed in the event that the line was longer than the buffer. It might
be
> in a code example somewhere like on AdaPower?

declare
   function Get_Line return String is
      Line : String (1 .. 80 + 1);
      Last : Natural;
   begin
      Text_IO.Get_Line (Line, Last);
      if Last < Line'Last then
        return Line (Line'First .. Last);
      else
         return Line & Get_Line;
      end if;
   end Get_Line;

   Line : constant String := Get_Line;
begin
   Put_Line (Line);
end;


> If you can do that, why not a
> similar subprogram for Unbounded_String? It would be even easier and not
> require recursion since you could just keep reading some arbitrary sized
> buffer in a loop and appending it to an Unbounded_String that is returned
to
> the caller.

I showed this in my last post.


> Speed may be an issue, but with a reasonably large buffer, I don't think
it
> would be unacceptably slow. Why would you have to read it one character at
a
> time?

No, you don't have to read one character at a time, as is shown above.