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From: Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com>
Subject: Re: Pragma Comment -- What does it do?
Date: 1999/11/12
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In article <80ejip$q9t$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> Hmmm...clever. I suppose just putting that info in an unused
> string might not do the job, as the string is liable to get
> optimized away.


Yes that's one reason, but another is that in many object
formats there is a distinguished capability for providing module
description strings of this kind (e.g. in VMS), and the pragma
Ident or pragma Comment links to this capability. For example,
if you run GNAT on VMS, you will find that the executable is
tagged in this manner with the version number, and there are
various tools in this environment that take advantage of this.

Yes, in the lowest common denominator case, all this pragma
does is put the string in the file somewhere, but in many
cases, it does more than that.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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