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From: James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org>
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.pl1
Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications
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Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:33:18 -0700
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Date: 2006-07-11T20:33:18-07:00
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Richard E Maine wrote:
> glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>
>>> (Java is the only language I know of that will actually fail the compile
>>> unless it /knows/ that every variable is initialized before use in every
>>> possible path.)
>> I am not sure what the language specification says, but Sun compilers
>> do that.  (Note: for scalars only, not arrays.)
> 
> I don't believe you. Reread what John actually wrote instead of what you
> were probably thinking about. Do you really claim that the Sun compiler
> will "fail compilation" (which is not the same thing as give a warning)
> if it does not "know" that every scalar variable is set before use in
> every possible path.

The Java language specification defines exact rules for
when a variable is considered "definitely" initialized,
and requires a compilation error if a local variable is
used before being definitely assigned a value according
to these rules (even if the compiler is so smart that it
can recognize that a value is actually assigned in such
a way that the specified rules don't detect it).

(But maybe you didn't notice that this was a point
about Java -- specifically that it is unusual, if not
unique, in this respect.)

-- James