Re: Computer Language Shootout

[Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net>]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert I Eachus <rieachus@attbi.com> writes:

Robert> If I were writing it, I would use a (OS specific) call to find
Robert> out how many characters I would read, if available, and create
Robert> exactly that much space on the stack.  If I couldn't determine
Robert> the size, I would read into a relatively large scratchpad in
Robert> the heap, and deal with overruns carefully.

Such a function would be a nightmare to implement properly. Not only
would it be unusable in systems which do not allow dynamic allocation
(absence of heap for example), but also it would force the compiler to
keep track of how the object was created (object from the stack or
from the heap). Also, creating a "relatively large scratchpad" won't
cover all cases, you will have to realloc memory in some cases. Also,
you would waste precious heap memory in multitasking systems, maybe
causing other tasks to raise Storage_Error on memory allocation
attempts.

Being more on the embedded side, I dislike any dynamic memory
allocation which is not caused by an explicit "new".

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam