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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Why C++ is successful
Date: 1998/08/10
Message-ID: <EACHUS.98Aug10172750@spectre.mitre.org>#1/1
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Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-08-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1dd4w22.16p27c7en0bswN@dialup119-1-10.swipnet.se> lars.farm@ite.mh.se (Lars Farm) writes:

 > Are you saying tht GC would introduce a larger risk for incorrect
 > programs than exceptions? If so, why?

   When I write software in Ada that requires storage management, part
of the testing is that 1) all storage that is allocated is later
freed, and 2) it is possible to characterize a limit on maximum memory
usage in terms of user understandable parameters.

   The amount of effort to do this is relatively trivial, or has been
every time I have had to consider the issue.  Occaisonally I have
found "errors" in the form of unrecoverd memory, and that always
resulted from an obscure bug such as simultaneous updates where one
process violated locking conventions.  (In Ada 83, in Ada 95 protected
objects seem to have eliminated that type of bug...)

   If garbage collection was implemented, checking heap usage before
and after the program was run would be useless.
--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...