Re: Beware: Rep spec on an enumeration type causes code explosion

["Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

"Stanley R. Allen" <s_allen@HSO.LINK.COM> writes:
>Joe Gwinn wrote:
>
>> What has in the past worked is lists of general issues and warnings,
>> without the naming of specific vendors, even though some issues may not be
>> universal, so at least we know under which rocks to look.  One way of
>> looking at this is that the list gives the relative size, weight, and
>> power of various idioms, so users have some idea what things cost.
>
>You need something like PIWG or ACES.
>
    I think its important to note that, while it is a good idea to
    identify language features which may have implementation problems,
    that no other language definition that I know of does this now. No
    language I am aware of includes in its definition any assessment
    of the relative size/speed for a construct and I would suspect
    this would be extremely difficult to do because it would vary so
    much from one target to another.

    All languages have corner cases or difficult features which may be
    subject to inefficient or erroneous implementation. Ada does
    better than most at trying to make sure that no given feature is
    of necessity difficult to implement efficiently. Certainly things
    like the PIWG are very useful in benchmarking various features.
    I think Ada has done better than most in compiling statistics on
    performance issues for various implementations and making that
    information generally available. But it seems to me that it is
    inherently something that must be done at the implementation
    level - not at a language definition level.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer     Voice:     561.796.8997
Pratt & Whitney GESP, M/S 731-96, P.O.B. 109600  Fax:       561.796.4669
West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600                  Internet:  CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
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