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From: gore@nucsrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: C++ as a way to use private types in C
Message-ID: <3930005@nucsrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Mar-87 22:45:26 EST
Article-I.D.: nucsrl.3930005
Posted: Fri Mar 20 22:45:26 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 21:14:22 EST
References: <870318190934.056@Jpl-VLSI.ARPA>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

/ nucsrl:comp.lang.ada / WELTY@GE-CRD.ARPA (WELTY RICHARD P) /
> Objects in C++ (like objects in Flavors, CommonLoops, Smalltalk, etc.)
> may be dynamically allocated and freed -- Ada Generics are a somewhat
> weaker notion.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  My understanding is that you can instantiate
a generic within a scope, thus "dynamically allocating" it.  When you leave
the scope, it's gone, "dynamically freed"... sort of.  If the instance has
allocated heap space during its life, that space is not deallocated
automatically, but becomes the garbage collector's problem.

Unless there is no garbage collector;  then it becomes the programmer's
problem.  And the programmer doesn't have any elegant ways of solving it.

This is one of the features of C++ that I miss most in Ada:  constructors and
destructors.  It makes it unduly difficult to have abstract data types that
use dynamic storage -- both in assuring proper intialization, and in assuring
proper release.

Jacob Gore
Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab
{ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore