A.9 The Generic Package Storage_IO
The generic package Storage_IO provides for reading
from and writing to an in-memory buffer. This generic package supports
the construction of user-defined input-output packages.
Reason: This package exists to allow
the portable construction of user-defined direct-access-oriented input-output
packages. The Write procedure writes a value of type Element_Type into
a Storage_Array of size Buffer_Size, flattening out any implicit levels
of indirection used in the representation of the type. The Read procedure
reads a value of type Element_Type from the buffer, reconstructing any
implicit levels of indirection used in the representation of the type.
It also properly initializes any type tags that appear within the value,
presuming that the buffer was written by a different program and that
tag values for the“same” type might vary from one executable
to another.
Static Semantics
The generic library
package Storage_IO has the following declaration:
{
AI12-0302-1}
with Ada.IO_Exceptions;
with System.Storage_Elements;
generic
type Element_Type
is private;
package Ada.Storage_IO
with Preelaborate, Global =>
in out synchronized is Buffer_Size :
constant System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Count :=
implementation-defined;
subtype Buffer_Type
is
System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Array(1..Buffer_Size);
-- Input and output operations
procedure Read (Buffer :
in Buffer_Type; Item :
out Element_Type);
procedure Write(Buffer :
out Buffer_Type; Item :
in Element_Type);
-- Exceptions
Data_Error :
exception renames IO_Exceptions.Data_Error;
end Ada.Storage_IO;
In each instance, the constant Buffer_Size has a
value that is the size (in storage elements) of the buffer required to
represent the content of an object of subtype Element_Type, including
any implicit levels of indirection used by the implementation. The Read
and Write procedures of Storage_IO correspond to the Read and Write procedures
of Direct_IO (see
A.8.4), but with the content
of the Item parameter being read from or written into the specified Buffer,
rather than an external file.
Reason: As
with Direct_IO, the Element_Type formal of Storage_IO does not have an
unknown_discriminant_part
so that there is a well-defined upper bound on the size of the buffer
needed to hold the content of an object of the formal subtype (i.e. Buffer_Size).
If there are no implicit levels of indirection, Buffer_Size will typically
equal:
(Element_Type'Size + System.Storage_Unit - 1) / System.Storage_Unit
Implementation defined: The value of
Buffer_Size in Storage_IO.
NOTE A buffer used for Storage_IO
holds only one element at a time; an external file used for Direct_IO
holds a sequence of elements.
Extensions to Ada 83
Ada 2005 and 2012 Editions sponsored in part by Ada-Europe
