From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Garbage collection (was a spinoff of a spinoff of a GA
Date: 1996/10/20
Date: 1996-10-20T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <DzL6J8.JG0@world.std.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 9610171549.AA07433@most
In article <9610171549.AA07433@most>,
W. Wesley Groleau (Wes) <wwgrol@PSESERV3.FW.HAC.COM> wrote:
>You are refuting a claim I didn't make. My QUERY was, "Since Ada now
>lets us customize garbage collection (or lack of) to each ADT, ...
How do you mean? GC is, in general, a global issue, and it's not easy
to customize it for particular types. There are things you can do with
controlled types, but all the schemes I can think of have some major
drawbacks. Can you explain in more detail what you mean? (Note: In
most of the programs I write (compilers and the like) there are hundreds
of mutually recursive types -- that is, records containing pointers to
other records and such.)
>...how many
>_Ada_ designers would be willing to pay extra for a reliable transparent
>global GC?" ...
>...I doubt that any would be willing to pay for one that is
>unreliable or non-transparent.
Well, there are a lot of people making a lot of money selling unreliable
software, these days. :-(
As for non-transparent, well, I want to have some hooks into the GC, so
that I can customize it for particular purposes. For efficiency, if
nothing else.
>Part of the Ada philosophy (at least for me) is that if something is a
>requirement, I want to see it somewhere in code. If it isn't a requirement,
>I don't want it cluttering the code AND I don't want it interfering with
>requirements (including cost and schedule requirements).
But memory management is an implementation detail -- it's not likely to
show up in the requirements. Most programs shouldn't leak storage, or
dereference dangling pointers, despite the fact that the requirements
don't say anything about it.
- Bob
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1996-10-20 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1996-10-17 0:00 Garbage collection (was a spinoff of a spinoff of a GA W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)
1996-10-20 0:00 ` Robert A Duff [this message]
1996-10-21 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
1996-10-21 0:00 ` Garbage collection (was a spinoff of a spinoff of a GA diatribe) Robert Dewar
1996-10-21 0:00 ` Garbage collection (was a spinoff of a spinoff of a GA Robert A Duff
1996-10-21 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1996-10-21 0:00 W. Wesley Groleau (Wes)
1996-10-22 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1996-10-25 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1996-10-25 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
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