The Ada Utility Library provides several simple operations that simplify the reading and writing of files through a single procedure call. These operations are not new since I've implemented most of them 10 years ago!!!

Reading a file line by line by using Ada.Text_IO is quite easy but annoying due to the fact that you have to open the file, iterate over the content getting one line at a time and then closing the file. To simplify this process, the Util.Files package of Ada Utility Library provides a simple Read_File procedure that uses a procedure as parameter and that procedure will be called for each line that is read.

with Util.Files;

  procedure Read_Line (Line : in String) is ...;

  Util.Files.Read_File (Path => "file.txt",
                        Process => Read_Line'Access);

Another Read_File procedure allows to read the file and get its content in a vector of strings so that once the file is read the vector contains each line. Yet, another Read_File procedure reads the file content in an Unbounded_String. You will use that later form as follows:

with Util.Files;
with Ada.Strings.Unbounded;

  Content : Ada.Strings.Unbounded.Unbounded_String;

  Util.Files.Read_File (Path => "file.txt",
                        Into => Content);

Very often it is also necessary to write some content in a file. Again, this is easy to do but a simple Write_File procedure that takes the file path and the content to write is easier to use in several cases:

with Util.Files;

  Util.Files.Write_File (Path => "file.txt",
                         Content => "something");

The Ada Utility Library contains other useful operations and features that have helped me in implementing various projects such as Ada Web Application and Ada Keystore. Have a look at the Ada Utility Library Programmer's Guide!