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14.1 About gnatkr

The default file naming rule in GNAT is that the file name must be derived from the unit name. The exact default rule is as follows:

The reason for this exception is to avoid clashes with the standard names for children of System, Ada, Interfaces, and GNAT, which use the prefixes ‘s-’, ‘a-’, ‘i-’, and ‘g-’, respectively.

The -gnatknn switch of the compiler activates a “krunching” circuit that limits file names to nn characters (where nn is a decimal integer). For example, using OpenVMS, where the maximum file name length is 39, the value of nn is usually set to 39, but if you want to generate a set of files that would be usable if ported to a system with some different maximum file length, then a different value can be specified. The default value of 39 for OpenVMS need not be specified.

The gnatkr utility can be used to determine the krunched name for a given file, when krunched to a specified maximum length.