Re: Unbounded strings (Was: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation))

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <mazzanti-2511961115230001@131.114.200.115>,
Franco Mazzanti <mazzanti@iei.pi.cnr.it> wrote:
>Only if we make use of the version of "Standard_Output" which returns a
>"File_Access" object, then in two concurrent calls of
>
>   Put_Line (Standard_Output.all, "xxxx"); 
>
>we would really use a shared variable.
>
>However, even in this case, the erroneousnees is not clearly implied by the
>reference manual because the File_Type argument has mode IN. So, we have
>sharing, but this sharing is safe because it is "read only".

One reason I object to this point of view is efficiency: It forces the
implementation to do some sort of locking inside Text_IO.  (In addition
to whatever the operating system does, I mean.)  But I need to do some
sort of locking in the program, too, because if I have two tasks writing
to the same file, I'm going to want to control the granularity of
interleaving.  So the locking with Text_IO is useless for a real
program.

- Bob