Re: conversion

[Stephen Leake <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov>]

"Andrew" <andrew@carroll-tech.net> writes:

> The more I think about the string/unbounded_string inconvenience the
> more I think about polymorphism.  Polymorphism helps readability in
> some situations.  In the case of the 'utilities' functions I think
> polymorphism
> would provide a great service.

It would help tremendously in this discussion if you would post some
actual examples. Simply stating what C does is not helpful; we need to
hear what you think Ada does (so we can point out what you may be
missing), and why it isn't good enough (so we can help you see why it
is :).


> <snip> 
> That explains why I had the feeling of extending the functionality of the
> Unbounded
> package.  It doesn't seem complete.

Please be specific. What features/functionality is it missing?

> -- In regard to separate compilation
> >Better to use child packages. "is separate" is really an Ada 83
> >feature; child packages in Ada 95 is a better way to structure things.
> >Sometimes "is separate" is a good way to go, but rarely.
> Is the "is separate" feature going away?

No.

> -- In regard to gnatmem gnatmem says it will start a program and you
> can provide the command line arguments to it. "gnatmem <program>
> <arg1> <arg2>..."
> 
> So, I have a program fashionably called testprog that takes two
> command line arguments; a path and a filename.  So I try to run
> gnatmem (after compiling with debug flag) like:
> 
> "gnatmem testprog . testdata.txt"

You'll have to post the source for testprog to get help on this one.

> -- In regard to GNAT
> >Hmm, this is confused. GNAT _is_ the Ada Core Technologies (ACT)
> >compiler.
> Ok, how about the IDE portion?

In addition to the compiler, ACT also produces two IDE's; GLIDE and
GPS. GLIDE is a minor enhancement and packaging of Gnu Emacs, and is a
very good IDE; I use Gnu Emacs (but not the GLIDE packaging) for all
work, mainly because I can customize it to do _exactly_ what I want it
to do, partly because it is available on _every_ operating system I
care about (Windows, Linux, Lynx, Solaris, etc.).

GPS is a new IDE (there is not yet a public release). It uses the Gtk
GUI library, and is therefore portable across MS Windows and X-Windows
(but not Lynx, yet). It is not as powerful as Gnu Emacs, and has
limited user customizations. It is definitely a work in progress; the
goal is to compete with MS Visual Studio etc.

GPS will be eaiser to learn than GLIDE for people who are used to
IDE's such as MS Visual Studio or Borland; GLIDE will be easier to
learn for people who are familiar with any flavor of Emacs. 

There is also a small IDE called AdaGide; it is intended for student
use, and has very limited functionality. It is not produced by ACT,
but by a group at the Air Force Academy (I believe).

-- 
-- Stephe