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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Subject: Re: unconstrained records
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Date: 2002-12-22T19:14:25+00:00
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see@messagebody.com (Jan) writes:

> So when I write the following code (this one works), the string in
> "name" will ALWAYS occupy 15 bytes?
> 
>    subtype Max_Index is Natural range 0 .. 15;
>    
>    type Test (length : natural := 0) is
>      record
>         text : string (1..length);
>      end record;
> 
> name : Test;

On most Ada compilers, that's true.  There are (or were) *some* Ada
compilers that used implicit heap allocation to implement this sort of
thing, so that when you assign a different-sized value, the old one gets
deallocated and the new one allocated.  It's quite difficult to get the
heap-based implementation right.  Consider renaming Name.Text(3), for
example.

- Bob