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From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Why no Free?
Date: 1996/10/18
Message-ID: <DzH9vL.LH0@world.std.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 190329005
references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com> <JSA.96Oct14172050@alexandria>
 <dewar.845340573@merv> <mheaney-ya023180001710961727290001@news.ni.net>
organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <mheaney-ya023180001710961727290001@news.ni.net>,
Matthew Heaney <mheaney@ni.net> wrote:
>To the designers of Ada 95: Why didn't you throw in a Free?

We would have been tarred and feathered.

By the way, what is the parameter type of the argument of this
procedure?  Root_Access'Class?  Hmm.  Or is "free" a reserved word, so
"free X" is a statement expecting any access type?

>...  Had this been
>discussed?

I don't think so.

>...  Is it a candidate for inclusion in Ada 0X?

I doubt it.  Probably by that time, garbage collection will be plentiful.
So the original assumptions in Ada 83 (GC available, and
Unchecked_Deallocation is dangerous) will be correct.  And given those
assumptions, the design decision to make Unchecked_Deallocation slightly
painful is the right decision.

- Bob