Re: ??? Help!: how to do unconstraned arrays/records???

[stt@houdini.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)]

Mats Weber (Mats.Weber@elca-matrix.ch) wrote:
: Tucker Taft wrote:

: >   type System_Config_Typ(Number_Of_Node_Widgets : Natural;
: >         Number_Of_Hosts_Widgets : Natural) is
: >     record
: >       Number_of_nodes :  Natural := 0;
: >       Nodes : Node_Array(1..Number_Of_Node_Widgets) :=
: >         (others => new Node_Config_Typ(Number_Of_Hosts_Widgets));
: >     end record;

: This looks dangerous to me because declaring an object of that type will
: allocate stuff from the heap, which may cause a memory leak. I would
: prefer explicit allocation (i.e. no default initial value for Nodes).

This won't allocate any heap objects if you specify 
Number_Of_Hosts_Widgets => 0 in the declaration.  

In any case, I would generally agree with you that types
which implicitly use the heap as part of their default initialization
are dangerous.  Since the exercise was to create a type for
heap allocation, it seemed OK to do it here.

--
-Tucker Taft   stt@inmet.com   http://www.inmet.com/~stt/
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