Question

I am making a program in Ada for Data Structures and Algorithms class.

My current problem is the error ‘actual for “this” must be a variable’
I did some looking around and I read about it being because of in out mode, but I’m not entirely grasping why it’s happening to me I guess.

The Examples I seen made sense but I guess since it’s my coding I’m just not seeing it?

Procedure AddUnmarked(g:Grid; this:Linked_List_Coord.List_Type; c:Cell) is
      cNorth : Cell := getCell(g, North(c));
      cEast  : Cell := getCell(g, East(c));
      cSouth : Cell := getCell(g, South(c));
      cWest  : Cell := getCell(g, West(c));
   Begin
         if CellExists(g, cNorth) and not cNorth.IsMarked then
            Linked_List_Coord.Append(this, cNorth.Coords);
         elsif CellExists(g, cEast) and not cEast.IsMarked  then
            Linked_List_Coord.Append(this, cEast.Coords);
         elsif CellExists(g, cSouth) and not cSouth.IsMarked  then
            Linked_List_Coord.Append(this, cSouth.Coords);
         elsif CellExists(g, cWest) and not cWest.IsMarked  then
            Linked_List_Coord.Append(this, cWest.Coords);
         end if;
   End AddUnmarked;

before “this” is passed to the function it is a Linked_List of my self defined type Coord (2 integers). It is initialized and has had a Coordinate pair added to it before the list is passed to the function above in my code.

Answer 1

What it means is that the list cannot be modified unless you are passing it as a modifiable parameter, that is, in out.

To elaborate, think of LIST_TYPE as being a handle to a tagged-type object; in order to ensure that LIST_TYPE is valid you need to pass it in via an in parameter (or create/manipulate a local object), but to pass out your results you need an out parameter.

So, in order to do your operations on an already-existing object {and get the results back} you need in out.