Version 1.8 of ai12s/ai12-0020-1.txt

From: Gregory D Moncreaff
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011  6:59 PM

Having worked with other language technologies, specifically C# and Java,

I was wondering if any consideration was being given to the idea of providing
some form of default rendering of record types via an attribute?

Typically one would expect it to report all components (recursively) of record
using the type primitive existing image attributes.

Access types would not be traversed to avoid recursion. Only the valid
components of a discriminated record would be reported.

Ideal format would be of something that could itself be used as a record
assignment by components.

Optionally providing the ability of overriding this attribute would be nice, but
not necessary.

Special care would need to be taken if String's had special ASCII characters
within them by concatenating the quotable portions of the string with the
specials.

Does this seem reasonable?

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011  9:16 PM

...
>I was wondering if any consideration was being given to the idea of
>providing some form of default rendering of record types via an
>attribute?

Yes, of course. We've considered a number of additional forms of 'Image and
'Value. We never got any consensus on whether they are important enough.

>Typically one would expect it to report all components (recursively) of
>record using the type primitive existing image attributes.

In what format?? (Aggregates, presumably.) Why only records, why not arrays?

>Access types would not be traversed to avoid recursion. Only the valid
>components of a discriminated record would be reported.

What gets output for a non-null access type parameter. Whatever it is, it
wouldn't mean the same thing in an aggregate, which is bad.

>Ideal format would be of something that could itself be used as a
>record assignment by components.

What is this? An aggregate I can imagine, I don't even know what "record
assignment by components" means (I imagine a series of assignment statements
when I read that, but I can't imagine how you could use that as an 'Image).

>Optionally providing the ability of overriding this attribute would be
>nice, but not necessary.

We've discussed this idea in the past, too. We also considered *only* providing
this (see below for why).

>Special care would need to be taken if String's had special ASCII
>characters within them by concatenating the quotable portions of the
>string with the specials.

A String is just an array in Ada, there is nothing special about it. And what
about components that are other arrays (arrays of integer, arrays of float,
arrays of record)? Task components? Protected type components?

>Does this seem reasonable?

Not particularly, for some of the reasons given above. As a built-in attribute,
the compiler would have to generate it for all types (whether it is used or not,
since it can't know whether some other package will use it). And given the
recursive definition you are giving, it would become very, very large for a lot
of types (even stopping on access types). Imagine a record containing a matrix
component, for one example.

For a compiler (like Janus/Ada) that is designed to make small size code, this
would be a problem. (At least it would not have any runtime impact unless used.)

I do think there might be something worth doing for 'Image (I don't think we
rejected it for technical reasons as much as importance). But an automatically
recursing 'Image isn't it, IMHO.

****************************************************************

From: Simon Wright
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011  2:23 AM

> I was wondering if any consideration was being given to the idea of providing
> some form of default rendering of record types via an attribute?

Gregory might find the ASIS-based  Auto_Text_IO useful -
http://www.sigada.org/WG/asiswg/ASIS_Clients.html#Leake

****************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018  7:24 PM

I'd like to get a consensus on intent before attempting wording.

For statements in the list below, I'd like confirmation.
For questions, I'd like answers.

1) Image is to be defined for all types (including
    limited types) and can be overridden in pretty much
    the same way that streaming attributes can be
    overridden (but see #8 below). Unlike streaming attributes,
    there are no availability issues - 'Image is always available.

2) For scalar types, behavior is unchanged (except in the
    user-defined case).
    In all (non-user-defined) cases, you get
    no line-breaking or any sort of formatting.
    [We are avoiding pretty-printer wars as much as possible.]

3) For task and access types, the string is implementation
    dependent. For example, the image for any value of such
    a type might be "<>". Or it might be something more useful.
    As mentioned earlier, users can override.

3) For untagged records, we use named-notation aggregate syntax
    (order of fields follows positional aggregate rules)

      type T is record Xx, Yy, Zz : Some_Type; end record;
      Obj : T := ... ;

      pragma Assert (Obj'Image =
        "(Xx => " & Obj.Xx'Image
        & ", Yy => " & Obj.Yy'Image
        & ", Zz => " & Obj.Zz'Image
        & ")"

    Ditto for specific tagged records; in particular, the
    tag value is not mentioned at all in that case. Nothing
    special for protected records.

    In the no-components case, image is "(null record)".

4) What do we do for class-wide? It seems like we need to
    mention the tag or the name of the specific type or
    something like that. Perhaps using qualified expression
    syntax, with Ada.Tags.External_Name (Obj'Tag) as the
    qualifier? Record aggregate syntax is used (as opposed to
    extension aggregate syntax). [It is ok if this displays
    two components with the same name; ordering resolves
    the ambiguity in this corner case.]

    There is also the issue of distributed overhead, similar
    to the case of a user who declares a tagged type and never
    uses its streaming operations; can we ignore this concern?

5) What about arrays? It would be very verbose to use
    named notation syntax, as in

      "(1 => 123, 2 => 456, 3 => 789, ..., 9999 => 0)"

    but we have to get the bounds in there somehow.
    Perhaps display it sort of like a record, as in

      "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 3, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 2, "
      & "((1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)))"

    Do we want to do anything different in the case where the
    first named subtype is constrained? One might argue
    that there is no need to display bounds in that case.
    But then what happens with an aggregate or a slice which
    doesn't have the bounds of the first named subtype?

    There is also a question about null arrays, both
    single- and multi-dimensional. Perhaps these might
    be displayed as

      "(First => 1, Last => 0, ())"

      "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 3, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 0,"
      & " ((), (), ())"

      "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 0, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 3,"
      & " ()"


    Do we want to do anything special for the image of
    a string type and use some variant of string-literal
    syntax? Probably, although string-type is the wrong
    thing to test for because that would allow something
    like
       type Element is ('A', 'B', None_Of_The_Above);
       type I_Am_A_String_Type is array (1 .. 10) of Element;
    and we don't want to use string-literal syntax for some
    values of a given type and not for others.

    A big advantage of using verbose named-notation
    syntax is that it would then be more natural to use range
    notation in the case where consecutive elements have
    the same image (with the usual permissions to avoid
    having to invoke the Image function twice if arguments
    are known to be equal).

    So we might see
       "(1 => 123, 2 .. 999 => 0, 1000 => 456)"

    Named-notation syntax is probably the way to go, even though
    (as noted earlier) it can lead to a lot of redundant text in
    some cases. If we do that, then we'd need consistent syntax
    for the null array case (single- and multi-dimensional).

6) Some images begin with leading blanks and some don't (that's
    already true, so we have to deal with both cases). Do we want
    to take any steps to avoid ugly double-blanks? For example,
    would the image of a record with two integers look like
      "(X => 123, Y => 456)"
    or like
      "(X =>  123, Y =>  456)" -- note the two additional spaces
    ? See the Assert pragma in item #3 above.

7) What about compatibility issues?

    Given a bunch of overloaded parameterless functions named
    Foo, could there be a situation where we currently accept
      Foo'Image
    but it would become ambiguous with the new rules?
    I think the answer is no, and there is no problem here.
    Nonetheless, it seems worth mentioning.

8) The same relationship between 'Image, 'Wide_Image, and
     'Wide_Wide_Image holds for any type as holds today. Only
     'Wide_Wide_Image is user-specifiable and the others
     follow suit as usual. If a mention of "user-specified
     Image attribute" or somesuch in this discussion appears
     to violate this rule, that is a case of preferring
     clarity over precision - to repeat: Image cannot be
     specified, Wide_Wide_Image can be specified, and
     specifying Wide_Wide_Image changes the behavior of
     Wide_Image and Image.

9) Inheritance of user-specified Image attributes follows
    the same rules as for streaming attributes.

10) Evaluation of an Image attribute never yields a
     static string if the attribute is user-defined.
     For a scalar type, at least, this means that we
     probably want to prohibit

       package Pkg is
          type T is range 1 .. 10;
       private
          function WWI (X : T) return Wide_Wide_String;
          for T'Wide_Wide_Image use WWI;
       end Pkg;

     because clients outside would have to look into the
     private part to see that T'Image(5) is not a static string.

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018  8:02 PM

...
> 3) For task and access types, the string is implementation
>     dependent. For example, the image for any value of such
>     a type might be "<>". Or it might be something more useful.
>     As mentioned earlier, users can override.

You have two #3s here. :-)

For a task, one could imagine using the task id somehow. (At least, that was my
first thought.) Not completely useful (especially for 'Value), but it would
clearly allow telling tasks apart and would be useful for debugging.

For access values, one could mandate using the image of the associated
Integer_Address in, say square brackets. (That would be familiar to anyone used
to an Intel assembler.)

One of the main purposes of the predefined version is debugging, and allowing
the image to be nothing is not useful for debugging. So perhaps it is better to
specify something, even if that something isn't enough to use in 'Value.

> 3) For untagged records, we use named-notation aggregate syntax
>     (order of fields follows positional aggregate rules)
>
>       type T is record Xx, Yy, Zz : Some_Type; end record;
>       Obj : T := ... ;
>
>       pragma Assert (Obj'Image =
>         "(Xx => " & Obj.Xx'Image
>         & ", Yy => " & Obj.Yy'Image
>         & ", Zz => " & Obj.Zz'Image
>         & ")"
>
>     Ditto for specific tagged records; in particular, the
>     tag value is not mentioned at all in that case. Nothing
>     special for protected records.
>
>     In the no-components case, image is "(null record)".

One needs to specify the case of the component names in this aggregate. I'd
expect the assertion to fail, because those names will probably be all UPPER
CASE or all lower case -- but never mixed case. (Most likely, copy the
enumeration rule.)

For the purposes of 'Value, some types would have to be disallowed as there may
not be unique UPPER CASE versions of the ids. But leave that worry to the author
of 'Value.

> 4) What do we do for class-wide? It seems like we need to
>     mention the tag or the name of the specific type or
>     something like that. Perhaps using qualified expression
>     syntax, with Ada.Tags.External_Name (Obj'Tag) as the
>     qualifier? Record aggregate syntax is used (as opposed to
>     extension aggregate syntax). [It is ok if this displays
>     two components with the same name; ordering resolves
>     the ambiguity in this corner case.]

The qualified expression syntax seems fine. One would want to be able to have a
'Value for it, at least if the components are all distinct. (That obviously
doesn't matter for 'Image).

>     There is also the issue of distributed overhead, similar
>     to the case of a user who declares a tagged type and never
>     uses its streaming operations; can we ignore this concern?

Yes. All good compilers ... sorry Tuck. Janus/Ada removes unused subprograms at
link-time, even if they occur in tags. (Yes, there is a way to write a shared
generic such that we have to turn off this optimization, but I've never seen
such a generic written by anyone -- including me -- to date.) So this is
possible, and this "dead code" overhead can be made zero if it is an actual
concern. This can be a real problem for tagged types (we implemented this to
make the "hello world" CLAW program more reasonably sized; I believe it changes
a 1.5M executable into a 0.5M executable, so this isn't trivial).

> 5) What about arrays? It would be very verbose to use
>     named notation syntax, as in
>
>       "(1 => 123, 2 => 456, 3 => 789, ..., 9999 => 0)"
>
>     but we have to get the bounds in there somehow.
>     Perhaps display it sort of like a record, as in
>
>       "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 3, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 2, "
>       & "((1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)))"
>
>     Do we want to do anything different in the case where the
>     first named subtype is constrained? One might argue
>     that there is no need to display bounds in that case.
>     But then what happens with an aggregate or a slice which
>     doesn't have the bounds of the first named subtype?
>
>     There is also a question about null arrays, both
>     single- and multi-dimensional. Perhaps these might
>     be displayed as
>
>       "(First => 1, Last => 0, ())"
>
>       "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 3, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 0,"
>       & " ((), (), ())"
>
>       "(First(1) => 1, Last(1) => 0, First(2) => 1, Last(2) => 3,"
>       & " ()"
>
>
>     Do we want to do anything special for the image of
>     a string type and use some variant of string-literal
>     syntax? Probably, although string-type is the wrong
>     thing to test for because that would allow something
>     like
>        type Element is ('A', 'B', None_Of_The_Above);
>        type I_Am_A_String_Type is array (1 .. 10) of Element;
>     and we don't want to use string-literal syntax for some
>     values of a given type and not for others.
>
>     A big advantage of using verbose named-notation
>     syntax is that it would then be more natural to use range
>     notation in the case where consecutive elements have
>     the same image (with the usual permissions to avoid
>     having to invoke the Image function twice if arguments
>     are known to be equal).
>
>     So we might see
>        "(1 => 123, 2 .. 999 => 0, 1000 => 456)"
>
>     Named-notation syntax is probably the way to go, even though
>     (as noted earlier) it can lead to a lot of redundant text in
>     some cases. If we do that, then we'd need consistent syntax
>     for the null array case (single- and multi-dimensional).

You seem to have answered your own question here. And I tend to agree. 'Image of
large data structures is never going to be very useful (what do you do with 20
pages of output), so it probably makes sense to just use the syntax that
provides the most information and least chance of getting it wrong.

> 6) Some images begin with leading blanks and some don't (that's
>     already true, so we have to deal with both cases). Do we want
>     to take any steps to avoid ugly double-blanks? For example,
>     would the image of a record with two integers look like
>       "(X => 123, Y => 456)"
>     or like
>       "(X =>  123, Y =>  456)" -- note the two additional spaces
>     ? See the Assert pragma in item #3 above.

Not sure here. It would be a pain to try to eliminate the leading blanks for
numeric 'Image, so I probably would say leave the extra blanks. (Or maybe, skip
putting a blank after "=>", as it will still be syntactically correct either
way.) One can always user-define it if you need it perfect.

> 7) What about compatibility issues?
>
>     Given a bunch of overloaded parameterless functions named
>     Foo, could there be a situation where we currently accept
>       Foo'Image
>     but it would become ambiguous with the new rules?
>     I think the answer is no, and there is no problem here.
>     Nonetheless, it seems worth mentioning.

Attribute prefixes have to resolved sans context (with the exception of 'Access
and any others with special rules). So it would have to be ambiguous now if Foo
is overloaded with no parameters.

...
> 10) Evaluation of an Image attribute never yields a
>      static string if the attribute is user-defined.
>      For a scalar type, at least, this means that we
>      probably want to prohibit
>
>        package Pkg is
>           type T is range 1 .. 10;
>        private
>           function WWI (X : T) return Wide_Wide_String;
>           for T'Wide_Wide_Image use WWI;
>        end Pkg;
>
>      because clients outside would have to look into the
>      private part to see that T'Image(5) is not a static string.

Luckily, string attributes are never static -- see 4.9(7) -- and we didn't
change that in part because we knew this AI was coming -- so this is a lot of
worry about nothing.

****************************************************************

From: Raphaël Amiard
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  8:23 AM

I agree wholeheartedly with this proposal, and Randy's suggestions, FWIW.

>...
>
>3) For task and access types, the string is implementation
>    dependent. For example, the image for any value of such
>    a type might be "<>". Or it might be something more useful.
>    As mentioned earlier, users can override.

I wonder: In my opinion we want to make a lot of that implementation dependent
(I mean it's good if there are some guide lines, but that's it).

I don't think we want users to start relying on the output of 'Image as some
kind of interchange format, so we should be clear on that in any way.

I'm also wondering, and I know we discussed it live but I don't see any
mention of that in your mail Steve: What about 'Value ? I think we said that
'Value won't be implemented for complex types, but it would be better to state
it clearly I guess.

If we don't implement 'Value, I would lean forward making most of the rules
you mention implementation dependent (for example the one about named
parameters in arrays), with the ARM just giving advice/guidelines/how do we call
that again

****************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  11:49 AM

> ...
>> 3) For task and access types, the string is implementation
>>      dependent. For example, the image for any value of such
>>      a type might be "<>". Or it might be something more useful.
>>      As mentioned earlier, users can override.
> 
> You have two #3s here. :-)
> 
> For a task, one could imagine using the task id somehow. (At least, 
> that was my first thought.) Not completely useful (especially for 
> 'Value), but it would clearly allow telling tasks apart and would be useful
> for debugging.

I agree, Task_Identification.Image of the task id is what we want for tasks.

Note that no changes involving 'Value are proposed in this AI.
As Raphael points out, it would probably be good to mention this explicitly
(i.e., to talk about what we are not talking about).

I've omitted in this reply all of your subsequent 'Value-related comments.

> For access values, one could mandate using the image of the associated 
> Integer_Address in, say square brackets. (That would be familiar to 
> anyone used to an Intel assembler.)

Fair enough, although if we are going to require something then I'd rather see
the address displayed in hex.

>> 3) For untagged records, we use named-notation aggregate syntax
>>      (order of fields follows positional aggregate rules)
>>
>>        type T is record Xx, Yy, Zz : Some_Type; end record;
>>        Obj : T := ... ;
>>
>>        pragma Assert (Obj'Image =
>>          "(Xx => " & Obj.Xx'Image
>>          & ", Yy => " & Obj.Yy'Image
>>          & ", Zz => " & Obj.Zz'Image
>>          & ")"
>>
>>      Ditto for specific tagged records; in particular, the
>>      tag value is not mentioned at all in that case. Nothing
>>      special for protected records.
>>
>>      In the no-components case, image is "(null record)".
> 
> One needs to specify the case of the component names in this 
> aggregate. I'd expect the assertion to fail, because those names will 
> probably be all UPPER CASE or all lower case -- but never mixed case. 
> (Most likely, copy the enumeration rule.)

Good point.

I agree - upper case. We certainly don't want the case that was used in the
declaration(s) of the type to have any effect on the runtime behavior of a
program.

>> 5) What about arrays? It would be very verbose to use
...
>>      Named-notation syntax is probably the way to go, even though
>>      (as noted earlier) it can lead to a lot of redundant text in
>>      some cases. If we do that, then we'd need consistent syntax
>>      for the null array case (single- and multi-dimensional).
> 
> You seem to have answered your own question here. And I tend to agree.
> 'Image of large data structures is never going to be very useful (what 
> do you do with 20 pages of output), so it probably makes sense to just 
> use the syntax that provides the most information and least chance of 
> getting it wrong.

It's worth noting that when we display an index value, we of course use the
Image attribute of the index type.

>> 6) Some images begin with leading blanks and some don't (that's
>>      already true, so we have to deal with both cases). Do we want
>>      to take any steps to avoid ugly double-blanks? For example,
>>      would the image of a record with two integers look like
>>        "(X => 123, Y => 456)"
>>      or like
>>        "(X =>  123, Y =>  456)" -- note the two additional spaces
>>      ? See the Assert pragma in item #3 above.
> 
> Not sure here. It would be a pain to try to eliminate the leading 
> blanks for numeric 'Image, so I probably would say leave the extra 
> blanks. (Or maybe, skip putting a blank after "=>", as it will still 
> be syntactically correct either way.) One can always user-define it if you
> need it perfect.

Changing the behavior of numeric 'Image would be grossly incompatible; that
seems out of the question to me.

I was thinking more about looking for a leading space on a component image and
conditionally preceding it with either a "=> " or a "=>" when generating the
image of an enclosing composite object.

===

I was thinking some more about the Image/Wide_Image/Wide_Wide_Image rules.

90% of the time, all that anyone is interested in is the Image attribute and
it is somewhat clunky to have to specify the Wide_Wide_Image aspect (or even
mention Wide_Wide_String at all).

But we want to retain consistency between the 3 image attributes; we don't
want, for example, to allow users to explicitly specify Image and Wide_Image
aspects for one type.

I originally proposed one solution: only Wide_Wide_Image is specifiable.

How about, instead, allowing any *one* of the three aspects Image, Wide_Image,
Wide_Wide_Image to be specified? Whatever aspect is specified determines the
behavior of all three attributes. [Alternatively, we could say that only Image
is specifiable but the specified value can be a function returning any of the
three predefined string types; there are advantages to this approach - we don't
have to worry about defining what happens in a case like
      type T1 is ... with Wide_Image => ... ;
      type T2 is new T1 with Image => ... ; ].

****************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  2:11 PM

More thoughts on this.

> It's worth noting that when we display an index value, we of course 
> use the Image attribute of the index type.

"the Image attribute" => "the appropriate image attribute".

If we are in the middle of generating, say, a Wide_Wide_String as part of
evaluating Some_Array'Wide_Wide_Image, then we want to use
Index_Type'Wide_Wide_Image (as opposed to Index_Type'Image).

> I agree, Task_Identification.Image of the task id is what we want for 
> tasks.

Discriminated task types should display the discriminant values somehow.
Perhaps extension-aggregate-ish syntax? Something like

    (task <task id image> with D1 => This, D2 => that)

and then, for consistency, undiscriminated image is

    (task <task id image>) .

Or perhaps we drop the word "task", but then the parens look odd in the
undiscriminated task case. Do we drop them?

>  Nothing special for protected records. 

Presumably Some_Protected_Object'Image behaves like a call to a protected
function with respect to locking.

>    Named-notation syntax is probably the way to go...
>    If we do that, then we'd need consistent syntax
>    for the null array case (single- and multi-dimensional).

If we define syntax for null array aggregates, then we should use whatever is
agreed upon. Otherwise, how about

     "(1 .. 0 => <>)"

     "(1 .. 3 => (1 .. 0 => <>))"

     "(1 .. 0 => (1 .. 3 => <>))"
? Or perhaps "()" instead of "<>".

====

It needs to be explicitly stated that
    Some_Object'Image
is defined when the object is of a non-numeric type.

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  2:56 PM

> I'm also wondering, and I know we discussed it live but I don't see any
> mention of that in your mail Steve: What about 'Value ? I think we said that 
>'Value won't >be implemented for complex types, but it would be better to
> state it clearly I guess.

We decided only to consider 'Value separately. (And assigned that AI to
Tucker.) We didn't decide yes or no on that.

> If we don't implement 'Value, I would lean forward making most of the rules
> you mention implementation dependent (for example the one about named
> parameters in arrays), with the ARM just giving advice/guidelines/how do we
> call that again

That's undecided at this time. But my preference would be to leave the
possibility open for the future, even if we decide not to do it this time.
Therefore, I would prefer to lock down the formats for as much as possible.
If we made them implementation-dependent, then we could never implement 'Value
(nor could a user write their own portable 'Value).

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  3:06 PM

...
> Note that no changes involving 'Value are proposed in this AI.
> As Raphael points out, it would probably be good to mention this 
> explicitly (i.e., to talk about what we are not talking about).
> 
> I've omitted in this reply all of your subsequent 'Value-related 
> comments.

My point of mentioning 'Value in my comments is that I want the possibility
of implementing that preserved as much as possible. So, if there is a syntax
that would work for 'Value, and one that would not work for 'Value, I strongly
lean toward the one that would allow 'Value. Note that "allowing 'Value" is
the same as "allowing users to write a portable 'Value-like subprogram". I
agree that whether or not we support 'Value this time (or ever) is not
relevant to this AI.

I think that is fair game to talk about whether or not the suggested format
could support 'Value (or similar user-written routines).

> > For access values, one could mandate using the image of the 
> > associated Integer_Address in, say square brackets. (That would be 
> > familiar to anyone used to an Intel assembler.)
> 
> Fair enough, although if we are going to require something then I'd 
> rather see the address displayed in hex.

The only issue with that is that we don't have a hex image routine anywhere.
Integer_Address'Image is well-defined.

...
> >> 6) Some images begin with leading blanks and some don't (that's
> >>      already true, so we have to deal with both cases). Do we want
> >>      to take any steps to avoid ugly double-blanks? For example,
> >>      would the image of a record with two integers look like
> >>        "(X => 123, Y => 456)"
> >>      or like
> >>        "(X =>  123, Y =>  456)" -- note the two additional spaces
> >>      ? See the Assert pragma in item #3 above.
> > 
> > Not sure here. It would be a pain to try to eliminate the leading 
> > blanks for numeric 'Image, so I probably would say leave the extra 
> > blanks. (Or maybe, skip putting a blank after "=>", as it will still 
> > be syntactically correct either way.) One can always user-define it 
> > if you need it perfect.
> 
> Changing the behavior of numeric 'Image would be grossly incompatible; 
> that seems out of the question to me.

I agree, but I was not suggesting that.
 
> I was thinking more about looking for a leading space on a component 
> image and conditionally preceding it with either a "=> " or a "=>"
> when generating the image of an enclosing composite object.

I think that is too much work, especially as it is value-dependent for
Integer'Image.

My suggestion was simply to always generate "=>" (with no trailing space),
as that is lexically and syntactically correct, and it avoids the double
spacing. Otherwise, just don't worry about that -- this is mainly for
debugging anyway, perfection not required.

> ===
> 
> I was thinking some more about the
> Image/Wide_Image/Wide_Wide_Image rules.
> 
> 90% of the time, all that anyone is interested in is the Image 
> attribute and it is somewhat clunky to have to specify the 
> Wide_Wide_Image aspect (or even mention Wide_Wide_String at all).
> 
> But we want to retain consistency between the 3 image attributes; we 
> don't want, for example, to allow users to explicitly specify Image 
> and Wide_Image aspects for one type.
> 
> I originally proposed one solution: only Wide_Wide_Image is 
> specifiable.
> 
> How about, instead, allowing any *one* of the three aspects Image, 
> Wide_Image, Wide_Wide_Image to be specified?
> Whatever aspect is specified determines the behavior of all three 
> attributes. [Alternatively, we could say that only Image is 
> specifiable but the specified value can be a function returning any of 
> the three predefined string types; there are advantages to this 
> approach - we don't have to worry about defining what happens in a 
> case like
>       type T1 is ... with Wide_Image => ... ;
>       type T2 is new T1 with Image => ... ; ].

Whatever the rule is, it can allow specifying only one. In this latter
Bairdian case, I'd expect the second one to totally override all three.
I'll leave the exact rule to you.
  
****************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  3:29 PM

> So, if there is a syntax
> that would work for 'Value, and one that would not work for 'Value, I 
> strongly lean toward the one that would allow 'Value.

I agree.

>>> For access values, one could mandate using the image of the 
>>> associated Integer_Address in, say square brackets. (That would be 
>>> familiar to anyone used to an Intel assembler.)
>>>
>>
>> Fair enough, although if we are going to require something then I'd 
>> rather see the address displayed in hex.
> 
> The only issue with that is that we don't have a hex image routine anywhere.
> Integer_Address'Image is well-defined.

Requiring (as opposed to allowing) something that isn't very useful would be
bad. I'd rather leave it implementation dependent than to require
decimal-format display for addresses. My first choice is requiring hex.

> My suggestion was simply to always generate "=>" (with no trailing 
> space), as that is lexically and syntactically correct, and it avoids 
> the double spacing. Otherwise, just don't worry about that -- this is 
> mainly for debugging anyway, perfection not required.

In a situation where one space would be ideal, I'd rather see two spaces than
none. So I'd rather unconditionally generate "=> " instead of "=>" if those
are the only two choices. Note that there is a similar issue with index values
in array aggregates (and these can appear in at least 3 different contexts -
after a left paren, a comma, or a "..").

> Whatever the rule is, it can allow specifying only one. In this latter 
> Bairdian case, I'd expect the second one to totally override all three.

Agreed.

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2018  9:51 PM

...
> >>> For access values, one could mandate using the image of the 
> >>> associated Integer_Address in, say square brackets. (That would be 
> >>> familiar to anyone used to an Intel assembler.)
> >>>
> >>
> >> Fair enough, although if we are going to require something then I'd 
> >> rather see the address displayed in hex.
> > 
> > The only issue with that is that we don't have a hex image routine 
> > anywhere. Integer_Address'Image is well-defined.
> > 
> 
> Requiring (as opposed to allowing) something that isn't very useful 
> would be bad.

On modern 32-bit machines, neither is very useful. Data point: When Janus/Ada
got ported to 32-bit machines, no 32-bit hex value routine was available and
someone took the lazy way out when programming the symbol table dump. The
decimal numbers, as you say, aren't very useful. No one can memorize a
ten-digit number, so looking for the values by hand is impossible, especially
as they all look similar. And searching is not fun, simply because there is a
lot of chance of error in typing a 10 digit number.

So we changed to hex. And guess what? The effect is the same: looking for
values by hand isn't possible in general, because memorizing an 8 digit number
isn't substantially easier than 10. And typing an 8-digit hex number for
searching is nearly as hard as a 10 digit decimal number (needing to use both
numbers and letters rather than just the number pad).

This gets even worse on modern OSes using address-space randomization, because
the first few hex digits vary more than they used to. And also for 64-bit
machines, where the number of digits is way too many to do anything with when
reading (in either format).

I gave up on both last winter and reprogrammed the routine to show the symbol
record unit/id pair instead. This is usually a pair of 2 digit numbers (in test
programs, anyway, they'd be longer in a full-sized program but luckily one
rarely has to debug those without a smaller reproducer). That's much easier to
look for manually (plus it gives some information about where to look), and
easier to search for with a program (as it's shorter). The downside is that it
requires dereferencing the pointer to be displayed, so a corrupt pointer can
crash the dump -- but a corrupt pointer is a critical bug and the failing dump
shows precisely where to look (wherever the dump stops), so that's hardly an
issue for this use.

Ergo, I'd expect most serious use of access Image to replace it with an
user-defined version. For one-off debugging, what it is hardly matters (so long
as values that are different can be recognized).

Aside: should the image of a null access value be "null" or "[00000000]" (if
hex) or "[ 0]" (if 'Image)??


****************************************************************

From: Jean-Pierre Rosen
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2018  1:28 AM

> The only issue with that is that we don't have a hex image routine 
> anywhere. Integer_Address'Image is well-defined.

If the (hex) image uses based notation, it can be fed back to 'Value

****************************************************************

From: Tucker Taft
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2018  11:29 AM

> ...
> Discriminated task types should display the discriminant values somehow.
> Perhaps extension-aggregate-ish syntax? Something like
> 
>   (task <task id image> with D1 => This, D2 => that)
> 
> and then, for consistency, undiscriminated image is
> 
>   (task <task id image>) .
> 
> Or perhaps we drop the word "task", but then the parens look odd in 
> the undiscriminated task case. Do we drop them?

I like the word "task" being there, and always using parentheses for composite
types.

> Nothing special for protected records. 

I would think you would have "(protected <id-of-some sort> with disc1 => X,
disc2 => Y, comp1 => Z, ...)" to be consistent with tasks, and to make it
clear that this is not your normal record.

> Presumably Some_Protected_Object'Image behaves like a call to a 
> protected function with respect to locking.
> 
>>   Named-notation syntax is probably the way to go...
>>   If we do that, then we'd need consistent syntax
>>   for the null array case (single- and multi-dimensional).
> 
> If we define syntax for null array aggregates, then we should use 
> whatever is agreed upon. Otherwise, how about
> 
>    "(1 .. 0 => <>)"
> 
>    "(1 .. 3 => (1 .. 0 => <>))"
> 
>    "(1 .. 0 => (1 .. 3 => <>))"
> ? Or perhaps "()" instead of "<>".

"<>" seems better than "()" given the general Ada allergy to empty parentheses.

****************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018  8:03 PM

I still don't have real RM wording for this one, but here is a more detailed 
outline than what we had before for this AI, incorporating feedback from the 
last meeting and subsequent discussions with Bob and Tuck. [This is the
!proposal section of version /02 of the AI - Editor.]

First, a summary of what we plan for the default (as opposed to
user-specified) implementations of T'Image for a possibly-nonscalar type T. 
Much of this has already been discussed, but there is some new stuff (e.g., 
the treatment of type extensions).

The completely new stuff that has not previously been discussed on the ARG
list is the discussion of the Put attribute in the second part of this
message.

Feedback, as always, is most welcome.

****************************************************************

From: Tucker Taft
Sent: Thursday, March  1, 2018  6:52 AM

I preferred the proposal to include the words "task ..." or "protected ..." 
in the 'Image for such types.  You wrote:

   For task types -
      Undiscriminated: "(<task_id_image>)"
      Discriminated: "(D1 => 123, D2 => 456, <task_id_image>)"
   For protected types -
      Nothing special. Same as any record type.
      Protected_Obj'Image is a protected function (this matters, for example,
      for locking).

Earlier I had seen a proposal of approximately:

   (task <task_id_image>) -- no discriminants

   (task <task_id_image> with D1 => 123, D2 => 456)

and for protected types, the analogous thing:

   (protected <protected_id_image>)  -- no discriminants or private components
   (protected <pid> with D1 => ... , C1 => ...) -- discriminants and/or components

I think these have a nice symmetry, and will reduce confusion with other
aggregates.

Clearly protected objects have some kind of identity (typically some sort of
internal semaphore ID), and that is something that would be of interest.  Just
dumping the value of the private components would be losing significant
information.

****************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Thursday, March  1, 2018  9:37 PM

> Earlier I had seen a proposal of approximately:
> 
>    (task <task_id_image>) -- no discriminants
> 
>    (task <task_id_image> with D1 => 123, D2 => 456)

I think you made that proposal, so I'm pretty sure you saw it. ;-)

But I agree with this, especially as a task id might just be a small integer
which would make no sense without context.

> and for protected types, the analogous thing:
> 
>    (protected <protected_id_image>)  -- no discriminants or private components
>    (protected <pid> with D1 => ... , C1 => ...) -- discriminants and/or components

I agree with the "protected" part, but there is no such thing as a
<protected_id>; protected types are just records with a predefined blob used 
by the task supervisor. One could use the address if someone insisted on an 
<id>, but this doesn't seem different than any other record type in that in 
some cases you might need to display the identity. In that case, you should 
dump the address as well as the image. So I don't think there should be any 
<protected_id> here.

In the case of tasks, most of them have no other components so the task id is 
needed to even get an idea of the type. That's unlikely for protected objects.
If we'd prefer consistency, I'd rather drop the id from the tasks rather than 
force a non-existent thing into the protected case.
 
> I think these have a nice symmetry, and will reduce confusion with 
> other aggregates.
> 
> Clearly protected objects have some kind of identity (typically some 
> sort of internal semaphore ID), and that is something that would be of 
> interest.  Just dumping the value of the private components would be 
> losing significant information.

I strongly disagree with this: Janus/Ada exposes none of this stuff even to
the rest of the compiler. The compiler just sees a private type of a
particular size. We'd have to define new task supervisor operations 
specifically for this purpose if we needed to expose something else -- but
the "something else" doesn't even exist. The address of the protected object
serves to identify it in any case that is needed.

I'd be surprised if other compilers differed on this. These guys - 
particularly because they have discriminants - are much more like a record
with some special operations when accessed than a task (which is an active
structure). Perhaps there is some mutex that the underlying OS gives an Id
to, but that has nothing to do with Ada.

The idea of a Task_Id is well-defined in Ada; there's an entire section in
the Standard talking about it. And that defines an Image function. That's 
what would appear in 'Image.

Imagining a whole new mechanism (one that is nonexistent in at least some
compilers) just for Image is waaaay over the top.

****************************************************************

From: Tucker Taft
Sent: Thursday, March  1, 2018  10:06 PM

Perhaps we should always just include its address. Clearly two otherwise
identical protected objects are still fundamentally distinct, since they
each have their own specific lock. That is all I was trying to accomplish
with the protected ID.

***************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Thursday, March  1, 2018  11:24 PM

OK, I guess, but isn't that fundamentally true of any limited type? You've
often made the point that the object identity of a limited object is an
important part of its abstraction. I was just wondering why protected
objects ought to be special in this way.

***************************************************************

From: Tucker Taft
Sent: Friday, March  2, 2018  2:55 AM

I agree this is true of all "immutably limited" types.  But the large majority
of immutably limited types are that because they contain a task or a protected
object, so adding such an identifier to a protected object seemed to solve
most of the problem.  I wouldn't be averse to a more general solution, but I
don't have a proposal for that.

***************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018  6:57 PM

Still no wording.

Here are the results of some discussions I've had with Randy and Tuck
since the summary I sent out a month ago. This includes both
decisions (tentatively) made and questions raised.

====

1)  For a task type T, T'Image yields

    "(task <task_id_image>)"

or, if discriminants are involved,

    "(task <task_id_image> with D1 => 123, D2 => 456)"

2) For a protected type, there is nothing analogous to
the task stuff (because there is nothing analogous to
a task_id for protected types). Protected types just get displayed
like any other record.

3) The default implementation of Put for a protected type would
be implemented as something like

    procedure Put (X : T; S : access Counted_Stream'Class) is
       Ignored : constant Dummy_Type := X.<Put_Helper> (S);
    begin
       null;
    end;

where <Put_Helper> is an anonymous compiler-generated protected
function. The idea here is to write out to the stream a consistent
snapshot of the state of the protected record, using only one
protected action to access all components. The definition given
in the RM only needs to say that the default implementation of
T'Image where T is a protected type involves calling a
protected function.

One could imagine making this protected function visible (perhaps
via some new attribute), but let's wait until there is some
demand for this.

4) Recall that in this new scheme [Wide_[Wide_]]Image is not a
user-specifiable attribute. Instead, a new attribute (tentatively
named Put) can be specified and Image and friends are defined
in terms of Put.

Do we want to name this new attribute "Put" or "Put_Image" ?

5) In the absence of a user-specified Put operation, should
new discriminants for a derived untagged type have an effect
on the image? Presumably yes (at least that's how the
streaming attributes work).

So the assertion in this example should succeed:

    type T1 (D1, D2 : Positive) is record ... end record; -- untagged
    type T2 (D : Positive) is new T1 (D1 => D, D2 => D);
    X : T2 (D => 123) := ... ;
    pragma Assert (X'Image /= T1(X)'Image);

***************************************************************

From: Steve Baird
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2018  5:04 PM

Here is a first attempt at !wording for this AI. [This is version /03 of the
AI - Editor.]

There is also a small !discussion section, but it discusses only a few corner
cases; it is by no means complete. For example, the !discussion section lacks
a rationale for why the Put_Image attribute/aspect was introduced and why 
Put_Image is user-specifiable but [Wide_[Wide_]]Image is not.

Undoubtedly several rough spots remain (although Randy already caught several 
for me in his preliminary review), but hopefully this can at least give us a 
preliminary version to work with.

One question I have is whether the level of precision of the description of 
the default implementations of the T'Put_Image for a composite type T is 
acceptable.

For example, for a record type we pretty much just say that we display 
components in the canonical order using positional aggregate syntax, 
displaying component names in upper case and calling each component type's
Put_Image procedure to display component values. Then we give an example and
that's about it.

Given this approach, it is not clear whether these examples belong in normal
RM text (which is how I have presented them) or as examples presented 
separately in an "Examples" section.

Take a look at the proposed presentation and see what you think.

As always, feedback is appreciated.

***************************************************************

From: Randy Brukardt
Sent: Wednesday, June 6, 2018  7:35 PM

> Here is a first attempt at !wording for this AI.

For the record, here's a few editorial-ish things that I did when posting
this:

(1) You didn't give a !summary or a !proposal. It seemed useful to have the 
short overview of the default images for each kind of type, so I left that 
(hopefully I found all of the changes), following a couple introductory 
paragraphs. The rest was dropped.

(2) I moved the example "Put_Image" implementations into the !discussion; 
they seemed valuable and shouldn't get lost. (Fixing the names, of course,
and also fixing the component names in the record case (they were all
"C1").)

(3) I changed the wording instructions to start with a capital letter. That 
is "Delete 3.5(...", not "delete 3.5(...". Added a few missing commas into 
those, too. The paragraph references should mention AARM paragraphs 
separately, but I didn't fix that yet.

(4) "new section 4.10 named "Images":" should say "Add a new subclause
                                                   4.10 Images"
"Section" is ISO-speak for an entire printed document; 4 is a "clause" and
4.10 (and smaller subdivisions) are "subclauses".

(5) "append to the end of the static semantics section of 13.13.1:"

We need to give the paragraph number where this happens here. So I replaced
this with:

"Add after 13.13.1(9) (the end of the static semantics section):"

Similarly for the next reference (should be to 13.13.1(9.1/1)).

(6)
   For a discriminated task type, the default implementation of T'Put_Image
   also includes discriminant values, as in
      "(TASK <task_id_image> with D1 =>  123, D2 =>  456)"
   .

We aren't even allowed to use a hanging period like this in AI text, much less
in the RM. But we don't need the extra indentation anyway, as the example 
should be in the example font. So this would read better as

   For a discriminated task type, the default implementation of T'Put_Image
   also includes discriminant values, as in
   "(TASK <task_id_image> with D1 =>  123, D2 =>  456)".

We're hoping that the editor remembers to mark these examples in the example 
font, but that's pretty likely (I know him well :-).

I reformatted the other examples to match, similar reasoning applies.

(7)
          overriding procedure Read (
	     Stream : in out Unbounded_Stream;
             Item   : out Stream_Element_Array;
             Last   : out Stream_Element_Offset)

The recommended formatting of overriding indicators has them on a separate 
line from the rest of the subprogram declaration, much like "generic". The RM
is supposed to follow this recommended formatting, regardless of what you 
normally do in your own code. I fixed all of these declarations.

===================================

And here are a few minor comments:

(C1)
         except that if the value of T'Max_Image_Elements (see below)
         is not -1 then the variable Local_Stream is instead declared as
              Local_Stream : aliased
                Ada.Streams.Counted_Streams.Unbounded.Unbounded_Stream
                  (Max_Elements => T'Max_Image_Elements);

Isn't this case supposed to use the Bounded form of the stream? The Unbounded 
form doesn't even have a discriminant. I'd guess that "Un" should be deleted 
from the above text (twice).

(C2)
    Pragma Default_Max_Image_Elements is a configuration pragma which
    takes a single argument, a static expression of type
    Ada.Streams.Stream_Offset in the range
    -1 .. Ada.Streams.Stream_Element_Offset'Last.
    Pragma Default_Max_Image_Elements shall not be used other than
    as a configuration pragma. If more than one Default_Max_Image_Elements
    pragma applies to a given compilation unit, then they shall all
    specify equal (static) Stream_Element_Offset values.

I'm not sure that we can use such a short definition of a pragma. All pragmas 
that I can think of give a syntax definition; even List and Page do that. So I
think we need to define the "form" of this pragma, with a Syntax portion.
(Ugh, I know.)

(C3) You probably ought to add a paragraph to the discussion describing the 
model and use of Bounded_Stream. I know why it's there ('cause you told me),
but it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the AI.

(C4) You deleted all of the AARM notes along with the original definition of 
Wide_Wide_Image, but you didn't put them back into the discussion of the 
default images of the various types. That seems like (relatively) important
information about topics like Negative Zeros and rounding is getting lost.
The Impldef information for Wide_Image and Image definitely has to move (so 
the annex M.1 listing doesn't lose them). A similar thought applies to 55.b/5.

(C5) Under the image of arrays, you have:

   This might generate an image such as
       "( 1 => ( 1 => ( 123 => True,  124 => False),  2 => ( 123 => False,
124 => False)),  2 => ( 1 => ( 123 => True,  124 => True),  2 => ( 123 => True,  124 => False)))"

This is too long for a line in the RM. It will get folded somehow, and that 
would probably give an incorrect interpretation of the actual result. (I see
this e-mail editor folded it!) I don't know what the appropriate answer is 
here, but this can't be in the RM as written; we need an alternative that fits
in one line or additional wording to explain the extra line breaks.

(C6)

For a prefix X that denotes an object of a non-universal type T, the following
attributes are defined:

This is wrong, unless you mean to disallow using 'Image on a universal integer
object. And if you meant to do that, you need to explain why and explain the
(significant) incompatibility in the !discussion section.
Moreover, you've reintroduced the object bug fixed in AI12-0225-1. We don't 
want X to have to denote an object!

Otherwise, this should read:

For a prefix X of a type other than universal_real or universal_fixed, the 
following attributes are defined:

Perhaps you need to make a similar change to Put_Image; there's no problem 
defining it for the (dynamic) universal_integer type (that is the largest 
signed integer type). You can't *redefine* that attribute, but that shouldn't
matter.

(C7) We've previously discussed in passing the need for Ada to have 
"marshalling" streams. (Claw has had those since 1999 - we needed them to
pack/unpack binary clipboard and registry contents - items that have to be
read/written in a single operation.) You're actually adding them sort of by
the back door. I have to wonder if they ought to have a bit more visibility
and if the names are right -- these packages fulfill an important need 
having nothing to do with Image.

We have a "Clear" operation to discard the contents - that seems useful in 
more general usage, even if Put_Image will never need it.

We also had an initial size discriminant for the unbounded form. Not as sure
if that's useful, or if there should be some Reserve_Capacity operation for 
the unbounded form. (We did it that way for the containers.)

(C99) "If a protected type T has protected subcomponents, then the default
implementation of T'Put_Image will probably violate the 
no-potentially-blocking-ops-during-a-protected-action rule.
Do we want any sort of legality rules relating to this?
In evaluating any possible rules relating to this scenario, keep in mind the
case of a protected type declared in the body of a generic unit with a 
subcomponent of a formal limited private type whose corresponding actual type,
for some particular instance of the generic, is a protected type."

I guess it couldn't be a Steve Baird AI without at least one such case.
*Everyone* is worried about taking the image of a protected object declared in
a generic body with a component of a formal limited private type. Happens 
every other day! ;-)

***************************************************************