Re: Does memory leak?

[ncohen@watson.ibm.com (Norman H. Cohen)]

In article <1995Mar24.123006.9471@eisner>, kilgallen@eisner.decus.org
(Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software) writes: 

|> From the Ada83 manual "An implementation may (but need not) reclaim the
|> storage occupied by an object created by an allocator, once this object
|> has become inaccessible."
|>
|> The next section describes the CONTROLLED pragma to forbid implementations
|> from reclaiming memory except when leaving the innermost "block statement,
|> subprogram body or task body" enclosing the type declaration.
|>
|> Is the complaint that Ada should force implementors to reclaim storage,
|> or that when the CONTROLLED pragma is not used, implementations should
|> take a less conservative approach than waiting to exit the scope of the
|> type declaration?

The wish is for implementations to take a less conservative approach,
i.e., to provide garbage collection in the absence of the Controlled
pragma.  Waiting to exit the scope of a type declaration is a far more
conservative approach than you make it sound, since interesting access
types are typically declared in library packages, and thus do not go out
of scope until the program is done!

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com