Ada 95: Modifying output of dictionary program

Question

I\'ve found this dictionary by William Whitaker on the Internet and I like its parsing capabilities. But the output doesn\'t fit for me.

The

Answer 1

As much as I like Ada and would encourage you to learn the minimal amount it would require to hack it the way you want...

Really, you are asking for a simple data filter, which it would be quite easy to accomplish by piping your output to awk. If you are running on any flavor of Linux you have awk already (and really should learn to use it). If you are on Windows, you can get awk and all sorts of other useful goodies from MinGW, which is one of the places you'd need to go to get an Ada compiler anyway.

If you do want a Windows Ada compiler, I'd suggest getting GNAT/GCC from there. The two other flavors available, GNAT/GPL and GNAT/PRO are available from AdaCore (the maintainers). However, GNAT/PRO must be purchased and GNAT/GPL renders distributions of any program compiled using it GPL. You might not mind the GPL applying to your program I suppose, but I'm guessing this isn't a serious enough need to spring for commercial support.

If you are on Linux, the GNAT Ada compiler should be available with GCC as an option (if not installed by default). The same two other options from AdaCore are available there too of course, if you like.

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Well, you asked about learning Ada. Really, if you are familiar with other compiled procedural languages (eg: C/C++, Java, Pascal, Modula-2, etc.) you shouldn't have too much trouble picking it up. This question covers Ada books. For myself, I generally just use the official LRM as a reference. Unlike most languages, Ada has an internationally standardized Language Reference Manual that is available online for free. It is also quite readable, as such things go.