Re: Please, help me.

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@tiscali.be>]

Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
[...]
> If there is a set of large variables within the
>
> procedure blah is
>    large variables
>
> begin
>
> end;
>
> then moving all of the large variables to a package spec that the
> procedure blah withs will reduce the stack space.
>
> If it is the sum of lots of littler things through the program then
> perhaps using the storage_size attribute on a new task that does all
> of the real work of the program (with the main thread just
> terminating) will work.

I have observed that array or record aggregates tend to be allocated
on the stack, too.  Array aggregates are particularly surprising since
they're easy to replace with loops.  For example:

procedure Proc is
   type T is array (1 .. 100_000) of Integer;
   A : T;
begin
   A := (others => 42); 
end Proc;

allocates two large arrays on the stack (A and the aggregate) with
some compilers I've used.  In contrast:

procedure Proc is
   type T is array (1 .. 100_000) of Integer;
   A : T;
begin
   for J in A'Range loop
      A (J) := 42;
   end loop;
end Proc;

allocates just one array on the stack.

Back on topic, setting the stack size depends on the target operating
system and on the host linker.  There are even situations where it is
not possible to set the stack size at all.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.