Re: Ada's formats

[Paul Hilfinger <hilfingr@gnat.com>]

Andrew,

You wrote:
> Can "we" (I hate this abuse of the Queens English) delete the existing, 
> broken code then? With that resolved, its possible to move onto the next 
> Ada problem. 

Joel wrote:
> Could you explain which part of the code you're refering to? 

You then wrote:
> Uses of the struct language_format_info in core GDB (which 
> translates to local_.*_format macros). Rip that out and I suspect that 
> you'll find adding ada's formatting using method rather than 
> printf formats is trivial.

I've finally been able to look at this seriously, and am
afraid we're still not clear on what is "broken" that needs fixing.
AFAICS, the language_format_info approach generally works in a purely
functional sense, and back when we (briefly) used it to apply Ada's
language formats for hex and octal strings, it worked just fine for
us.  (Currently, I see that m2-lang.c and scm-lang.c use non-C-like
values for their language_format_info entries; is the mechanism working for 
them?)

So I am assuming that you are referring mainly to a bogosity in the
design aesthetics.  I am willing to do the necessary cleanup here as
community service, even though we have no need of it for the Ada
language module, but first I would like to make quite sure I have a
clear picture of what your idea of the right solution is.  Is it
simply a matter of replacing the language_format_info format strings
with functions, or did you have something else entirely in mind?

Paul