Advanced Techniques

RAII

Ada supports scope-based resources, also called RAII by extending the Controlled or LimitedControlled types.

Ada

with Ada.Finalization;  use Ada.Finalization;
package Sample is
    -- "Controlled" types exhibit RAII behavior:
    type Capricorn is new Controlled with
    record
        Dummy : Integer;
    end record;

    overriding procedure Initialize(C : in out Capricorn);
        -- Initialization after creation.

    overriding procedure Adjust(C : in out Capricorn);
        -- Adjustment after assignment.

    overriding procedure Finalize(C : in out Capricorn);
        -- Different than Java's Finalize, in that it's deterministic and more
        -- analogous to a C++ destructor.

    -- If you don't want one of these do to anything, you can avoid writing a
    -- definition in the package body and define the procedure as "do nothing"
    -- by writing:
    --
    -- overriding procedure Finalize(C : in out Capricorn) is null;
end Sample;

package body Sample is
    procedure Initialize(C : in out Capricorn) is
    begin
        -- Do something on initialize.
    end Initialize;

    procedure Adjust(C : in out Capricorn) is
    begin
        -- Adjustment after assignment.
        --
        -- If you want Adjust to do the same as Initialize and use the same object
        -- code without generating a separate function, you can just do
        -- procedure Adjust(C: in out Capricorn) renames Initialize;
    end Adjust;

    overriding procedure Finalize(C : in out Capricorn);
        -- Different than Java's Finalize, in that it's deterministic and more
        -- analogous to a C++ destructor.
end Sample;

C++

class Capricorn {
public:
// Similar for all constructors.
Capricorn () {}

// Copy constructor.
Capricorn(const Capricorn&) {}

// Move constructor.
Capricorn(Capricorn&&) {}

// Copy assignment.
Capricorn& operator=(const Capricorn&) { return *this; }

// Move assignment.
Capricorn& operator=(Capricorn&&) { return *this; }

// Destructor.
~Capricorn () {}
};

Timing out on a Blocking Operation

task body My_Task is
    Elem : A_Queue_Element;
begin
    loop -- processing loop
        select
            A_Queue.Blocking_Queue (Elem);
        or
            -- Stop processing after a 1 second timeout. Removing this delay causes
            -- immediate exit if a block occurs.
            delay 1.0;
            exit;
        end select;

        -- ... process Elem ...
    end loop
end My_Task;

Waiting for all tasks to complete

A list of statements doesn't exit until all tasks are complete, so by using declare ... begin ... end you can wait until all your tasks are done.

declare
    A_Task : My_Task;  -- task which needs to finish before more processing
begin
    null; -- Just wait until the task is done.
end;

-- Continue other operations here.