Table Creation and Table Searching

Abstract

In this section we present an example that uses generic packages to provide routines to search a table and to retrieve the items stored there. The table, and auxiliary data objects created to help the search, are encapsulated within a package created by instantiating a generic package. They are not accessible except by the routines exported from that package. A program may have several tables that it can search; a package must be instantiated for each table, and the routines which are exported act specifically upon the table within the corresponding package.