Question

Just putting part of some code here where I am writing two values to a text file.

Ada.Long_Float_Text_IO.Put (File => Output_File, Item => Out_2, Fore => 1, Aft => 4, Exp => 0);
Ada.Text_IO.Put (Output_File, "   ");
Ada.Long_Float_Text_IO.Put (File => Output_File, Item => Out_3, Fore => 1, Aft => 4, Exp => 0);

I can separate these numbers Out_2 and Out_3 by a space as shown in the code. The results give (after writing more numbers in the two columns):

-75.2340   421.5700   
1256.0000   15.4700   
-4568.9800   -118.2800   
3784.2100   0.0000  

I would like to know if there is a way to specify a tab spacing so that I can have something like this in my text file:

-75.2340     421.5700   
1256.0000    15.4700   
-4568.9800   -118.2800   
3784.2100    0.0000  

So which control character produces the above alignment?

Thanks a lot…

Answer 1

For a tab, there’s the obsolescent ASCII.HT or Ada.Characters.Latin_1.HT.

Or you could use the Width parameter to Ada.Long_Float_Text_IO.Put and friends.

Edit: There is no Width parameter for real output! You could use a large Fore, which would effectively right-justify the output.