8.4 Summary.

Now that we have introduced the language itself and the core library you can see how well rounded the Ada95 general purpose programming language is.

Some features seem to be missing at first glance - for instance the lack of sharing operations on files or the fact there is no library routine to get environment variables. However you must always remember that one of the prime objectives of the Ada programming language is portability, from small embedded programs in machines as small as a toaster through massive multi-million line, multi-platform applications on main-frame computers.

To help this situation the ability to interface with code written in other languages allows you to access routines not available in the core library or vendor/platform specific libraries.

This chapter has introduced a number of examples from the Ada_Store application, though of course the library is used in more places than mentioned here. For example the string handling routines are heavily used in the package Ada_Store.PoST.Application.Operations to format text for output to the displays or printers.


Previous PageContents PageNext Page

Copyright © 1996 Simon Johnston &
Addison Wesley Longman