Mike Brenner asks:
> If there is a way to do Unix general expressions in Ada, please post
> the reference where the source code can be downloaded. This is not
> a smiley-type issue, this is a major advancement in Ada's capabilities.
> Languages like C, Tcl, Perl, awk, cshell, vi, etc., come with Unix
> regular expression built in. Ada sorely needs this capability.
Take a look at TASH, http://www.ocsystems.com/xada/tash/. You can get
regular expression pattern matching through this Ada binding to Tcl.
Part of my motivation for asking this general-purpose vs. domain-
specific question in the first place is to better understand whether
it would be worthwhile to "thicken" the Tcl binding to make regular
expression processing and Tcl/Perl-style string, list, and array
processing more usable in Ada. I find Tcl and Perl very easy to
program for these purposes and I want to understand why that is.
My hope is that will result in an improved, thicker Tcl/Ada binding.
I would like to be able to take advantage of those things Tcl/Perl/Icon
type languages are good at (string and text processing, interfacing to
Unix system calls and utilities, simple GUIs) and yet work in a
strongly-type, reliable general-purpose language. I find that whenever
I write a program in Tcl or Perl, the program eventually becomes big
enough and complex enough, that I would like to be using Ada instead.
--
Terry J. Westley, Principal Engineer
Calspan SRL Corp, P.O. Box 400, Buffalo, NY 14225
[log in to unmask] http://www.calspansrl.com
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