Question

Whenever I go to read in record from a file in Ada, I always get an error. The goal of the program is to read (from a file) an integer which is how many items needed to be recorded, in a last name consisting of (at most) 12 letters, a first name consisting of (at most) 12 letters, and a float value, then store those into a record.

This was from AdaGIDE:

record2.adb:32:04: invalid parameter list in call (use -gnatf for details)

My code:

---

with Ada.Text_IO, Ada.float_Text_IO, ada.Integer_Text_IO;
use Ada.Text_IO, Ada.float_Text_IO, ada.Integer_Text_IO;

procedure Record2 is

   TYPE Testrec IS
      record
         test1 : string (1..12);
         test2 : string (1..12);
         test3 : float;
   END RECORD;

   T:  Testrec;   
   Lt: Integer; 
   numitem: integer;

   random1:   Ada.Text_IO.File_Type;

begin -- Record2

   Ada.Text_IO.Open(File => random1, Mode => Ada.Text_IO.In_File, Name => "info1.dat");

   Get_Line(File => random1, Item => Testrec, Last => Lt);

   Put(T.test1); 
   Put(T.Test2);
   Put(T.Test3);

end Record2;

info1.dat’s contents (no extra spaces or lines, just from “L” to “0”:

LastName    FirstName   4.00

My problems is the Get_Line, that I know. LastName is padded with spaces, filling the 12 characters, the same goes for FirstName. Then the float is taken for its value in general. What exactly am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Basically, you’re using Get_Line, which reads strings, to attempt to read an instance of a record.

Since this looks like a homework assignment (which is okay), I’ll give you a hint:

Try reading the fields individually.

That’s not enough to totally solve your problem, but it’ll get you further, from which point you can try to work out the rest.