Re: for S'Image use Func??

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

"J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> writes:

> Robert A Duff a �crit :
>> But for "columns" you want something like:
>> 
>>     1
>>    -3
>>   123
>>  -123
>> 
>> But 'Image gives you:
>> 
>>  1
>> -3
>>  123
>> -123
>> 
>> I don't get it.  'Image isn't particularly helpful in producing
>> columnar output.
> 	
> 'Image is just for quick, debug-like output.

So that's why it's broken?!

I'm imagining the Ada 83 design team saying, "This feature is
only for quick, debug-like output, so let's make it do
something annoying, so folks won't be able to use it
for serious work, MWAHAHAH."  ;-)
Sorry, I don't buy that -- I think they just made a mistake.

And it's too late to fix it.

>...If you want nice formatted
> output, by all means use the IO packages, that's what they are for.

I don't want nice formatted output.  I want the human-readable
string image of the number, and for 123, that's "123",
not " 123".  In other words, I want:

Put_Line (Error_Count'Image (Num_Errors) & " errors detected.");

to print:

123 errors detected.

All this talk about formatting came from folks asking
why does 'Image produce an annoying blank, and the
proposed answer was "for columnar formatted output",
and the response is "no, that doesn't explain it,
because an annoying blank doesn't do columnar output".

- Bob