Re: Ada and embedded applications

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

I think a more prudent answer would be "It Depends". Considering that it is
possible to generate programs that will need lots of constraint checking at
runtime & constraint errors are sort of part of exception handling, one
might conclude that exception handling can cost a significant part of the
budget due to code bloat & runtime inefficiencies. (This may be from whence
the original "rubbish" came from - a misunderstanding of the *necessity* of
doing all this checking.)

The other side of exception processing is that you can easily turn off
checking & run without a net. At that point, exception processing should be
at or near 0 as part of the memory/CPU budget.

I've done embedded stuff where leaving in runtime error checking would have
killed the project. In a sense this is "inherent in the language" because
Ada requires that the checks be done for validation. In another sense it is
not inherent because the language provides means of disabling the checks
when speed/space is an issue. So it is fair to say that exception processing
*can* impose a significant overhead, but *need not*, provided you understand
what you are doing.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ken Garlington" <Ken.Garlington@computer.org> wrote in message
news:JBgT6.1923$E6.322615411@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com...
> : Also does exception handling in Ada really
> : have a large overhead?  (This is probably an implementation issue but is
> their
> : anything in the language that makes exception handling bulky?).
>
> Not for most of the embedded Ada code I've written.
>
>