RE: Allocate an array of a record with a discriminant?

[tmoran@acm.org]

Do you want to allocate an array of a record with a discriminant,
or do you want to create and access a list of words?  If the
latter, you might do better to make a package with a spec
along the lines of:

  Overflow : exception;  -- Attempt to Add too many words,
                         -- or too many characters of words.
  Nonesuch : exception;  -- Attempt to Get non-existent ID.

  type Word_Counts is range 0 .. ???
  subtype Word_Indices is Word_Counts range 1 .. Word_Counts'last;

  function Count return Word_Counts;
  -- return number of stored words.

  function Add(S : in Word) return Word_Indices;
  -- Add to store.  Return new index.
  -- Raise Overflow if too many or too long words.

  function Get_Length(Index : in Word_Indices) return Natural;
  -- raise Nonesuch if no such word.

  function Get(Index : in Word_Indices) return Word;
  -- raise Nonesuch if no such word.

  ... anything else that's needed

which can be easily implemented by storing the words as successive
characters in a single big string, and using an array of start
indices to let you quickly get the n-th word.