Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation)

[ka@socrates.hr.att.com (Kenneth Almquist)]

eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>     Second, do you have another version of gnat around?  If not 3.07
> should be available soon.  This is one area where the reference
> vs. value calling sequence pessimization is probably heavily felt, so
> earlier (and later) versions of gnat should do better.

I have an older version, but it generates a.out format binaries
and I can't get it to work with the ELF tools I recently installed.

>     Will it beat the Icon time?  I don't know, but certainly if it
> doesn't the performance "problem" may occur other than in the gc
> routines.  Even if Unbounded_String is implemented with a Controlled
> type, clever optimization using RM rules only requires memory
> allocation and freeing three times total.

The allocations and dealocations appear explicitly in the Adjust and
Finalize operations for the Unbounded_String type.  (The Unbounded_
String objects are not allocated or deleted inside the loop; only
the memory containing the values of the unbounded strings.)

It occurs to me that a comparison with Modula 3 speed would be more
meaningful than a comparison with Icon interpreter speed.  Modula 3 is
a compiled languge, and even uses the GCC back end on most systems.
Unfortunately I don't have Modula 3 installed anywhere...
				Kenneth Almquist