Re: Help needed - Upper Bound of an array - Question.

[Mark Lorenzen <mark.lorenzen@gmail.com>]

On 7 Feb., 15:41, adacrypt <austin.oby...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> My problem is this.  I need to test the frequency of the ciphertext
> which is sometimes a long string of large positive integers of 7 or 8
> digits in magnitude and to do that I need an array that will
> accommodate up to 10,000,000 elements ideally.

I take it that the size of the array then will be up to 10,000,000
times 8 octets = approx 80 Mb. Is that true?

> I have already found out that I cannot go more than 500,000 elements
> in the array size.  My computer has 32-bit architecture.

Probably true.

> What I need to know from some kind person is this - Is the array size
> a property of the Ada-95 language or the computer?

It is not a restriction imposed on you by the Ada language, but the
environment under which your program is runnning. By environment I
mean the operating system.

How is memory for the array allocated? If it is allocated on the
stack, then you could easily hit the maximum stack size allowed by
your environment.

> I need to know this before resorting to a 64-bit computer which might
> not solve the problem and be an expensive mistake.

A 32-bit environment can easily address 80 Mb of data.

Regards,

Mark L