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

[Tucker Taft <stt@avercom.net>]

Tucker Taft wrote:

> ...
> 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.

Note that region-based memory management is similar to local
access types (collections) in Ada, but can be more flexible, in that
the region can be (implicitly) passed as a parameter to a function,
with allocation from the appropriate region being performed
inside the function.  This is similar to what can be accomplished
by passing an access type into a generic, but doesn't have
some of the issues associated with generic instantiation.

We have been talking about "universal" or "anonymous" access
types a bit already for Ada 200X.  This might be the right
place to insert region-based memory management as well.
-- 
-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)