Re: GNAT exception traceback

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

In article <dewar.866289217@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Full tracebacks are another matter. There are serious performance penalities
>in making exception occurrences be of arbitrary length, and also some very
>nasty cases. ...

How about storing a fixed-length traceback?  Usually the top few stack
frames are enough for debugging.  So you could pick some number, say 40
stack frames, and store that many from the top of the stack.  No need to
use the heap, unless the programmer explicitly copies it to the heap.
Or maybe the top 30 and bottom 10.  Or maybe make it user configurable.

Although Exception_Information returns a String, the traceback data
should be stored internally in a more compact form (a series of return
addresses, or some such), and converted to String when E_I is called.

- Bob