Appendix A: The Ada Character Set, Delimiters, and Reserved Words

This appendix is adapted from the Ada 95 Reference Manual, Sections 2.1, 2.2, and 2.9

The Ada Character Set

The Ada 95 standard uses the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. This character set includes the usual letters A-Z, but also a number of additional characters to provide for the additional letters used in non-English languages. For example, French uses accented letters like é and à; German has letters using the umlaut such as ü, the Scandinavian languages have dipthongs such as æ, and so forth. For purposes of this book, we use just the 26 letters of English; if you are in another country and wish to use the additional letters, you can find out locally how to do so on your computer or terminal. The following characters are used in constructing programs in this book:

(a) upper case letters

    A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

(b) lower case letters

    a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

(d) special characters

    " # & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > _ |

(e) the space character

Format effectors are the characters called horizontal tabulation, vertical tabulation, carriage return, line feed, and form feed.

The characters included in each of the remaining categories of graphic characters are defined as follows:

(f) other special characters

    ! $ % ? @ [ \ ] ^ ` { } ~

The following names are used when referring to special characters and other special characters:

    symbol	name			symbol 	name
    
    "	quotation		>	greater than
    #	sharp			_	underline
    &	ampersand		|	vertical bar
    '	apostrophe, tick	!	exclamation mark
    (	left parenthesis	$	dollar
    )	right parenthesis	%	percent
    *	star, multiply		?	question mark
    +	plus			@	commercial at
    ,	comma			[	left square bracket
    -	hyphen, minus		\	back-slash
    .	dot, point, period	]	right square bracket
    /	slash, divide		^	circumflex
    :	colon			`	grave accent
    ;	semicolon		{	left brace
    <	less than		}	right brace
    =	equal			~	tilde

Delimiters

A delimiter is either one of the following special characters:

    & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > |

or one of the following compound delimiters each composed of two adjacent special characters

    =>   ..   **   :=   /=   >=   <=   <<   >>   <>

The following names are used when referring to compound delimiters:

    delimiter	name
    
    =>		arrow
    ..		double dot
    **		double star, exponentiate
    :=		assignment (pronounced: "becomes")
    /=		inequality (pronounced: "not equal")
    >=		greater than or equal
    <=		less than or equal
    <<		left label bracket
    >>		right label bracket
    <>		box

Reserved Words

The identifiers listed below are called reserved words and are reserved for special significance in the language. In this book the reserved words always appear in uppercase.

     ABORT          ELSE           NEW            RETURN
     ABS            ELSIF          NOT            REVERSE
     ABSTRACT       END            NULL
     ACCEPT         ENTRY                         SELECT
     ACCESS         EXCEPTION                     SEPARATE
     ALIASED        EXIT           OF             SUBTYPE
     ALL                           OR
     AND            FOR            OTHERS         TAGGED
     ARRAY          FUNCTION       OUT            TASK
     AT                                           TERMINATE
                    GENERIC        PACKAGE        THEN
     BEGIN          GOTO           PRAGMA         TYPE
     BODY                          PRIVATE
                    IF             PROCEDURE
     CASE           IN             PROTECTED      UNTIL
     CONSTANT       IS                            USE
                                   RAISE
     DECLARE                       RANGE          WHEN
     DELAY          LIMITED        RECORD         WHILE
     DELTA          LOOP           REM            WITH
     DIGITS                        RENAMES
     DO             MOD            REQUEUE        XOR

A reserved word must not be used as a declared identifier.