Re: Memory leakage

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> In article <8rapg8$66b$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>
> > You suspect correctly. It is quite easy to produce memory
> leaks in Ada,
> > if you really want to. All you have to do is use "new", and
> not ever
> > use Unchecked_Deallocation.
>
> That missed the point of the question, it is not a memory
> leak in language terms to allocate and never free using
> appropriate statements in the language, this is simply
> doing what you are asked to, and the only thing that makes
> it a leak is intent.

You cut the original question, which to me is quite clear that it is
talking about the possibility of having memory leaks in an Ada95
program. Here it is again:

> My impression is that in Ada 95 it should not be possible to have
memory leaks, but I'm not so sure.

The source (user mistakes vs. language problems) was not mentioned.
Therefore both should be assumed to be under discussion. Perhaps I did
misread the poster's intent as you suggest, but its certainly not clear
that I did!

I know it sounds like a silly question to a lot of experts. But I have
encountered lots of folks before who have heard this sillyness about
Ada; that its somehow immune to memory leaks. I've also heard the
opposite fantasy: that it somehow leaks memory just by existing on your
hard-drive. If someone comes here questioning one of these views, we
should certainly be ready to address it, no matter how silly of an idea
it is.

Not that what you are talking about is a invalid realm of discussion
either. But if you would *prefer* to talk about that, just come out and
say so. We won't hold it against you. :-)

> The question was whether using constructs in the language
> you can get leaks, and the answer should be no.

I do seem to remember an issue with tasks having to keep data about
themselves around after they terminate (perhaps for the 'terminated
attribute?).

--
T.E.D.

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