J.2 Allowed Replacements of Characters
Syntax
1
The following
replacements are allowed for the vertical line, number sign, and quotation
mark characters:
2
- A vertical line character
(|) can be replaced by an exclamation mark (!) where used as a delimiter.
3
- The number sign characters
(#) of a based_literal can be replaced by
colons (:) provided that the replacement is done for both occurrences.
3.a/2
To be honest: {
AI95-00285-01}
The intent is that such a replacement works in the Value
, and Wide_Value
, and Wide_Wide_Value
attributes, and in the Get procedures of Text_IO
(and Wide_Text_IO and Wide_Wide_Text_IO as well) }, so that things
like “16:.123:” is acceptable.
4
- The quotation marks
(") used as string brackets at both ends of a string literal can
be replaced by percent signs (%) provided that the enclosed sequence
of characters contains no quotation mark, and provided that both string
brackets are replaced. Any percent sign within the sequence of characters
shall then be doubled and each such doubled percent sign is interpreted
as a single percent sign character value.
5
These replacements do not change the meaning
of the program.
5.a
Reason: The original purpose of this
feature was to support hardware (for example, teletype machines) that
has long been obsolete. The feature is no longer necessary for that reason.
Another use of the feature has been to replace the vertical line character
(|) when using certain hardware that treats that character as a (non-English)
letter. The feature is no longer necessary for that reason, either, since
Ada 95 has full support for international character sets. Therefore,
we believe this feature is no longer necessary.
5.b
Users of equipment that still uses | to represent
a letter will continue to do so. Perhaps by next the time Ada is revised,
such equipment will no longer be in use.
5.c
Note that it was
never legal to use this feature as a convenient method of including double
quotes in a string without doubling them — the string literal:
5.d
%"This is quoted."%
5.e
is not legal in
Ada 83, nor will it be in Ada 95. One has to write:
5.f
"""This is quoted."""
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