Re: Visibility and Elaboration

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@attbi.com>]

tmoran@acm.org wrote:

 >   I remain confused.  That sentence sounds like elaboration after the 
main
 > program starts, is at least mildly unusual.  But my understanding is that
 >   procedure p(n:in positive) is
 >     x : array(1 .. n) of integer;
 > causes the "elaboration" of "x" each time "p" is called, ie, executing
 > a program is typically a constant back and forth between elaborating
 > declarations and executing statements.

Not confused at all, it is a matter of viewpoint.  The "normal" Ada
programming style is to only use late elaborating objects when
necessary.  So maybe 90% of the object declarations in a "typical" Ada
program are elaborated either before or during the elaboration of the
main program.  However, if you count the number of times a particular
declaration is elaborated, early and/or static elaboration is often a
negligable part of the whole.

However the fact that almost all elaboration errors occur before the
main program runs encourages the view that elaboration checks all occur
before the program runs.  This is wrong, and is what I was originally
responding to.