Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!botter!klipper!victor
From: victor@cs.vu.nl (L. Victor Allis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Sun Pascal bug?
Message-ID: <996@klipper.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 29 Feb 88 15:17:01 GMT
References: <14411@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>
Reply-To: victor@cs.vu.nl (Victor Allis)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 38

In article <14411@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> vinson@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Michael Vinson) writes:
>The problem is as simple as it is absurd: when I try to
>compile a program that read a string (i.e. a packed array of char) from
>a text (yes text) file, the compiler tells me "Can't read strings from 
>a text file"!!! This is crazy.
>
>This is a pain in the *ss! Does anyone have any ideas/solutions/remedies?
>
>Michael Vinson

In ISO-Pascal, reading a string is not possible. This is one of
ISO-Pascal's bad sides (another one is the impossibility to work with
random access files).

Most commercial Pascal implementations I've seen provided extra string
functions, but you must know that these are only extra's.

So you better find yourself a Pascal implementation you like more, or
you write a nice procedure ReadString, which does the thing you want,
like:

---------------
procedure ReadString(var f : text;
		     var String : packed array[Low .. Up: integer] of char);
var i : integer;
begin
  for i := Low to Up do
    if not eoln(f) then 
      read(f, String[i])
end;
---------------

I did not test this (just wrote it as example). It should work on a
Level 1 implementation of Pascal.

Victor Allis.
Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam.
The Netherlands.