As I understand the question, it has to do with deferred constants.
David Hoos' reply was good for the syntactic solution. However, good
object-oriented programming style would suggest that we abandon the
use of deferred constants in our package designs. The usual form is
something such as,
package P is
type T is private;
Empty_T : constant T;
-- more public stuff
private
full definitions of private stuff
end P;
The more object-oriented way to approach this is to export a function
for Empty_T in place of the deferred constant.
function Empty_T return T;
This allows a variety of implementations on Empty_T, eliminates problems
of dependecies when we change the values of the constants later, and
improves maintainability. It also eliminates the need for the designer
to fool around with syntax better left to the package implementor.
Richard Riehle
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Richard Riehle
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AdaWorks Software Engineering
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