Pragma Annotate (GNAT Reference Manual)

### 2.13 Pragma Annotate ¶

Syntax:

    pragma Annotate (IDENTIFIER [, IDENTIFIER {, ARG}] [, entity => local_NAME]);

    ARG ::= NAME | EXPRESSION

This pragma is used to annotate programs. IDENTIFIER identifies the type of annotation. GNAT verifies that it is an identifier, but does not otherwise analyze it. The second optional identifier is also left unanalyzed, and by convention is used to control the action of the tool to which the annotation is addressed. The remaining ARG arguments can be either string literals or more generally expressions. String literals (and concatenations of string literals) are assumed to be either of type `Standard.String` or else `Wide_String` or `Wide_Wide_String` depending on the character literals they contain. All other kinds of arguments are analyzed as expressions, and must be unambiguous. The last argument if present must have the identifier `Entity` and GNAT verifies that a local name is given.

The analyzed pragma is retained in the tree, but not otherwise processed by any part of the GNAT compiler, except to generate corresponding note lines in the generated ALI file. For the format of these note lines, see the compiler source file lib-writ.ads. This pragma is intended for use by external tools. The use of pragma Annotate does not affect the compilation process in any way. This pragma may be used as a configuration pragma.