Re: Ada's formats

[Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org>]

> 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?)

I was asking if we should even support the feature of being able to 
print values in a language specific way.  Or to approach this from 
another angle, in addition to supporting cut'n'paste of source code 
expressions into GDB, should we support cut'n'paste of GDB's output 
values into the source code?

The conclusion was a resounding ``maybe''.

Knowing that m2 is effectively dead, and that JimB (the ex Scheme 
maintainer) was recommending scm's removal, this leaves us with ``maybe 
useful'' (read dead) code (well unless that ``maybe'' gets upgraded to a 
``yes'' :-).

Also knowing that the code is problematic (grep for 32x64), this tells 
us that it's time to cut our losses.

> 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?

If you're willing to overhaul the code in that way, and then use it for 
Ada, would be very much appreciated!  I was putting forward that the 
code simply be removed.

enjoy,
Andrew