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From: billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Overloading of ":=", ADT survivability
Message-ID: <3986@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 28 Dec 88 05:46:56 GMT
References: <4193@enea.se>
Sender: news@hubcap.UUCP
Reply-To: wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>From article <4193@enea.se>, by sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog):
>>>   Now, WHY, is A of mode "in out" in the Assign procedure? If we had
>>> "out" only, nothing "erroneous" could occur. 
>>
>>     Because the ASSIGN procedure needs to be able to DESTROY the old
>>     value; DESTROY procedures must read objects during the process
>>     of destroying them.  Please review the recent discussion rather
>>     than recreating it, unless there are new issues to be considered.
> 
> Talk about rehash. We all know, except Bill of course, that the memory-
> management problem is best handled with garbage collection.

And in article <4195@enea.se>, Erland also writes:
> I think Ada should require garbage collection
> that could be disabled with a pragma for critical applications.

    But consider what happens when the programmer of a critical
    application must write his/her assignment procedures.  Use
    of the "out" mode results in the production of garbage.  Since
    the GC crutch is not available, the more survivable "in out"
    mode is then preferred.  

    Now since we know that "out" mode is worthless under certain
    circumstances, and since ADT designers must design for the widest
    possible audience, "in out" is the mode of choice.

    Similarly, when performing deletions and such, ADT designers must
    again design for the widest possible audience.  This directly implies
    an ADT which manages its own deallocations.  

    Certain aspects of the language tend to interfere with the need 
    of critical applications to exercise total control over memory 
    management; among these are the inability to integrate DESTROY
    procedures into the automatic destruction of local environments.

    Sure, it requires more mental discipline to be space-conscious.
    But with experience, it becomes automatic.  Forgive me if I've
    been a bit harsh at times, but once a person has become accustomed
    to managing space and time simultaneously, complaints regarding
    pointer errors sound very much like complaints that it's too
    difficult to have to walk and chew gum at the same time. 

    I like to program my ADTs to be *survivable*, in the hardest possible
    sense.  An ADT should be capable of surviving multitasking, invalid 
    parameters, memory exhaustion, whatever.  Only then will the part
    achieve widespread acceptance.


                                       Bill Wolfe

                               wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu