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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:32:06 +0200
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Date: 2004-09-14T10:32:06+02:00
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On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:51:05 -0400, Hyman Rosen wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> There should be no char* (pointers) at all, that's for C++. For Ada, all
>> string types should be related types.
> 
> I assume that the pointer thing in Ada was added so that Ada code could
> more easily access C/C++ interfaces which want char *.

Then that should be Interfaces.C.Strings.chars_ptr. I suppose that the
intention was a kind of ersatz to To_String.

> You might still
> want pointers in Ada so you can do ragged string arrays, like the C
>      char *x[] = { "1", "12", "123" };

This is why I wrote about incorrectness. IF Ada's strings were designed as
a set of related types, then "..." literals could be ones of/convertible to
Unbounded_String and so an initialized ragged array would be no problem,
instead of horrific:

type Ragged is array (Integer range <>) of Unbounded_String;
X : constant Ragged :=
    (  To_Unbounded_String ("1"),
       To_Unbounded_String ("12"),
       To_Unbounded_String ("13")
    );

Pascal's lessons still to be learned. Bounds, whatever static, bound or
dynamic should not be a part of the string type!

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de