Re: variable length strings

[Jeffrey Carter <spam@spam.com>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:
> 
> C is broken so Ada should be too? That makes *no* sense.

It was certainly not my intention to imply that; I'm merely cataloguing
the behavior of different systems. So far I've tried GNAT, ObjectAda,
and gcc C. I have an old Janus/Ada 83 for DOS somewhere, but I'll take
your word that it behaves differently.

> Huh? A null line without a line terminator would be indistinguishable
> from a line terminator at the end of a file. So it is perfectly
> reasonable for an implementation to treat this as reading past the
> end of a file (Janus/Ada certainly does too). Indeed, I'd argue that
> it is impossible for there to be a null line without a line
> terminator at the end of a file.

I think we violently agree about this.

> The case I'm talking about is when the last line is *not* null and
> there is no explicit line terminator. In that case, the
> implementation should provide an implicit line terminator, as the
> logical view of a file is that it is always there (see A.10(7)), and
> (IMHO) it is unreasonable to refuse to properly process a file that
> is missing one.

And about this, too.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"In the frozen land of Nador they were forced to
eat Robin's minstrels, and there was much rejoicing."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
70