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From: busigin@ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ada vs. C
Date: 1996/08/14
Message-ID: <4usjqd$3mmo@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 174123477
references: <3208F2BA.E34@freenet.scri.fsu.edu> <dewar.839592211@schonberg>
 <320B693F.4ACA@freenet.scri.fsu.edu> <320D2677.499F@thomsoft.com>
reply-to: busigin@ibm.net
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-08-14T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In <320D2677.499F@thomsoft.com>, Dave Wood <dpw@thomsoft.com> writes:
>The Quelisher wrote:
>> 
>> Robert Dewar wrote:
>> > That's bogus, comparable programs in Ada and C will generate
>> > executables of the same size, at least using a technology like GNAT.
>> 
>> Ok, so let me explain where I am coming from then. Here is the source in
>> both languages that does the exact same very basic thing:
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> C :
>>         main()
>>         {
>>                 printf("Hello world! \n");
>>         }
>> 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Ada :
>> 
>>         WITH Ada.Text_IO; USE Ada.Text_IO;
>>         PROCEDURE hello IS
>>         BEGIN
>>           Put_line("Hello world!");
>>         END hello;
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> When I compiled each of the above here are the file sizes that resulted:
>>         C ----> 24,576
>>         Ada --> 253,952
>> 
>> I used gcc to compile the C code and gnatmake for the Ada code, both on
>> unix machines. Now that's what I meant by the difference in file sizes.
>> I understand though that there is a tradeoff between file size and
>> functionability of a program, but let's take PC's for example. Who wants
>> to run a 6 mb program written in Ada when a 2mb program written in C
>> does the same thing? I'm not trying to knock Ada or anything, rather
>> just making an observation. Again, just my $.02
>> 
>
>I get the following "hello world" figures on the PC:
>
>Visual C++ 4.2  --------------->  76.0 KB
>ObjectAda for Windows v7.0 ---->  89.5 KB
>
>This compares the current VC++ release against the pre-release ObjectAda
>compiler, both with debug symbols turned off and no special optimizations.
>
>Not much of a difference, really, especially considering that MS has
>had uncounted gazillions of person-years to apply to MSVC compared to
>the humble Ada vendor (ahem).
>
>So, I'd have to agree with Robert:  if you're comparing apples and
>apples, there's little fundamental reason that an Ada program must
>be bigger than a C program.  I don't see where this is a language
>issue, as opposed to an implementation issue.
>
>By the way, you forgot to #include <stdio.h> in your C snippet.  :)
>
>-- Dave Wood
>-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
>-- http://www.thomsoft.com

Using GNAT under OS/2, the hello program compiles to
a 262,958 byte executable. When I strip the debug code,
the size goes down to 53,252 bytes. When I run the
LxLite utility program to compress the EXE file, the size
goes down to 31,364 bytes. This file size is certainly not
out of line with C/C++ compilers.

Anthony Busigin
NITEK Corporation