Re: Ada Examples and Problems

[tmoran@acm.org]

>It works on a sequential read but not on a non-sequential read.
  "For direct access, the file is viewed as a set of elements
occupying consecutive positions in linear order;..."  LRM A.8(3)
So each element of a direct access file must be the same size.
Since you have owner, dog, owner, dog... where owner and dog are
different size records, that won't work.  But "Pair" in
  type Pair is
    Person : Owner;
    Animal : Dog;
  end record;
is a constant size record.  If you want the N-th owner, or N-th dog,
  Set_Index(The_File, N);
That seems easier than taking the individual byte as the constant
size element and then doing arithmetic that you hope gets you to
the correct byte position.