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From: Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: String view of file
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 19:29:12 +0200
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On 2022-11-21 18:42, Jeffrey R.Carter wrote:
> On 2022-11-21 16:52, Niklas Holsti wrote:
>>
>> For the OP's benefit (Jeffrey of course knows this): an alternative to 
>> Unbounded_String is to allocate the Result string on the heap, and 
>> return an access to the heap string. With that method, you can still 
>> read the entire string with one call of FAS_IO.Read instead of 
>> Character by Character.
> 
> I know it, and I deliberately reject it. Having access types in a pkg 
> spec is poor design. Delegating the associated memory management and all 
> its opportunities for error to the pkg client is very poor design.


I agree in general, but there are design trade-offs that depend on 
issues not made clear in the original question, such as the size of the 
file and the performance requirements. So I thought that the OP should 
know of the heap alternative, even if it has some poorer properties too.