Re: C to Ada : a piece of code

[geert@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl (Geert Bosch)]

Robert Dewar (dewar@cs.nyu.edu) wrote about adding GC to GNAT:
`` Note that this statement is a bit broad, it should say "some users might
   depend in the future on being able add" .... I don't know of anyone
   doing this with GNAT today. ''

Fortunately I also don't know any GNAT compiler using virtual origins
today. ;-) There are good reasons to want automatic storage deallocation
with Ada-95, while I don't think there are good reasons to want an
Ada implementation to use virtual origins.

Dynamically allocated heap objects are typically used in
situations where the objects are global. This makes deciding when an
object should be deallocated error-prone. Any error a programmer
makes using Unchecked_Deallocation is likely to lead to erroneous
execution or memory leakage. 

The effects of these errors are hard to detect and when detected,
these errors are hard to debug and solve. Since modern garbage
collectors provide a good solution for these problems, it is
very desirable (sp?) to have one for GNAT.

Regards,
   Geert

PS. I refer to "modern GC" as opposed to the old and slow GC
    present in EMACS, for example.
-- 
E-Mail: geert@sun3.iaf.nl    
      ``I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.''
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