Re: memory management in Ada: tedious without GC?

["Peter C. Chapin" <pchapin@sover.net>]

Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> In Ada RAII is realized with controlled types.

Controlled types in Ada are great, but I think C++ has a bit of an edge 
in this area (not considering the issue of the type hierarchy). In Ada, 
the compiler calls Adjust after it has finalized the object on the left 
side of an assignment. In C++ operator=() has access to both sides of 
the assignment at once. This makes it easier to write exception safe 
assignment operators by copying the state of the source object *before* 
destroying the target. It doesn't seem like that's possible with Ada 
controlled types.

I've worked around this by declaring such types limited, using 
Limited_Controlled, and living without a user defined assignment 
operation. This seems to be a feasible way to handle the situation, 
especially in Ada 2005 which allows functions to return limited types.

Anyway, to the OP... yes, RAII is available in Ada although the precise 
details of how to set it up are a bit different than in C++. Be aware 
that Ada uses the word "finalize" differently than the way it is used in 
the Java community. In Ada finialization is more like C++ destruction. 
It is deterministic.

Peter