Region-based mem mgmt [was: Re: Safe C++]

[Tucker Taft <stt@avercom.net>]

Brian Rogoff wrote:
> ...
> Rather than just snipe from the side at people trying to do better, take
> a look at
> 
>         http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/cyclone/
> 
> and consider that it certainly has some features which are arguably better
> than the Ada alternatives.
> 
> Putting my "Ada fan" hat on, I'd say that some of the work on region based
> memory management should find it's way into some Ada dialect, maybe even
> into the standard... 

I agree that we should look closely at "region-based memory management"
for Ada 200X.  It is essentially the same thing as mark/release heap
management, but with guaranteed safety.  That makes it ideal for
Ada -- provably safe and simple/efficient at run-time.

I like the ease of use provided by garbage collection, but it is
difficult to prove the safety of a general purpose garbage collector
("prove" in the sense of FAA-style certification), and it is certainly
not simple nor terribly efficient at run-time, especially when compared
with mark/release heap management.

> -- Brian

-- 
-Tucker Taft   stt@avercom.net   http://www.avercom.net
Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) 
Bedford, MA  USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar:
http://www.averstar.com/~stt)