Re: C to Ada : a piece of code

[Jonas Nygren <jonas@joy.ericsson.se>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> iGeert said, regarding virtual origins
> 
> "Please, don't do this! It is possible, but certainly not perfect!  If
> applications are long-lived and they dynamically allocate memory at a
> certain rate, garbage collection is necessary for keeping the language
> safe.
> 
> Since Ada-compilers do not provide garbage collection (sad, but still
> true), users depend on being able to add a conservative garbage
> collector.  Conservative garbage collectors depend on pointers to
> objects be stored in a fixed format. Having virtual origins breaks all
> conservative garbage collectors and makes it almost impossible for a
> third party to add garbage collection to the compiler."
> 
> Nothing to worry about, obviously the use of virtual origins is only
> possible with fat pointers. So just use thin pointers for your garbage
> collected environment.

What is the Ada syntax for fat pointers versus thin pointers?
(by now many of you know I am an Ada novice, but I have never 
encountered thin/fat pointers in the RM vocabulary, so I just want
to educate myself).

/jonas