Re: Code size of Ada ? was Re: Ada95 Strengths/Weaknesses.

[Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> > Simply replace "Disk" by "Ram". Or lets think about a program
> > of 1.5 MB, how transfer it on floppy ?
> 
> No one has mentioned programs that would not fit on a floppy.
> Please do NOT assume that because one Hellow world program
> was 10K and the other was 20K, that you have a factor of
> 2 difference, no, more likely you have a 10K difference,
> representing the basic overhead. So perhaps we are
> talking about a 1.32 MB program rather than 1.33.

This is absolutely wrong. OK, you don't like the "Hello world",
so let me show an other example. I've wrote a simple WEB-server
for remote control of production maschines. The code that GNAT
produces was more than 800K, the same with Modula was about
70K (10% !), both on WinNT. Oh, sorry, I remember, you don't 
like comparison with other languages. Well, I compiled the same
with ObjectAda 7.1 and the total amout of code (with static linking)
was 200K. Therefore I think, that there must be a way to produce 
smaller EXE-files with GNAT, too. And _this_ was the question of
my original posting. Ok, ok. I understand. I do not pay lots of
$$$ for support, therefore I will not be told the neccessary 
compileroptions <g>. But it does not matter, I prefer the Aonix 
tool anyway.
 
> As I said earlier, the comparison figures are pretty useless
> you cannot generalize from them in this way.

Don't you think, it's a question of what was campared ? Yes, one
single "Hello world" says nothing. But a few programs ranging from 
4 lines up to 5000 should be a little representative. 
 
> > > The size of large programs is a concern, but measuring the
> > > size of small programs has nothing at all to do with
> > > the size of larger, since what you are really
> > > concentrating on here is the default size of the minimal
> > > run-time library.
> >
> > As mentioned in my original article, I did the comparison not
> > only with "Hello world" (you've read it) ?
> 
> But you only did it with small programs ... and almost
> certainly non-comparable programs at that ...

NO. See above. Please tell me _your_ definition of "small programms".