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From: Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Concurrent access to packed arrays
Date: 21 Jan 2001 11:59:06 +0100
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Date: 2001-01-21T11:59:06+01:00
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For simplicity, assume the array is of type String.  Some machines
(early Alphas?) do not offer load/store functions for individual
octets, so the characters of a string might not be independently
addressable.  Now suppose we have a string object and a variable which
indicates the last position in the string which has been written:

        The_String : String (1 .. Some_Maximum);
        Last_Written : Natural;
        pragma Atomic (Last_Written);

Task A1, A2, ... make a copy of Last_Written and read data from
The_String (1 .. Copy_Of_Last_Written).  Task B continues to write to
The_String (Last_Written + 1 .. Some_Maximum) and update Last_Written.
This might result in concurrent read and write access to the same
memory location, but I think this will work anyway because task B
writes to the location without changing the part interpreted by the
reading tasks.  However, according to the Ada standard, this scenario
results in erroneous execution.

Now my question: Are there in fact platforms where this doesn't work?
Shall I play safe and apply pragma Atomic_Components (and use an
unpacked array instead of a packed one)?