Re: memory management and productivity

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Russ wrote:

> Maybe you think I am just too simple minded. Well, maybe I am. But so
> are a lot of other people, including many of the decision-making
> managers you guys are so fond of. When they compare languages (if they
> do), one thing they do is to set up a list of check boxes, and one is
> for GC. As a rule of thumb, a check beats a question mark every time.

Ada does not have a REQUIREMENT for garbage collection.  What it has 
though is a requirement for no memory leaks:

AdaRM A.4.5(88): Implementation Requirements

     No storage associated with an Unbounded_String object shall be lost 
upon assignment or scope exit.

Those words were chosen specifically to require what garbage collection 
promises, but not to require any particular garbage collection scheme. 
If the implementor implements this using something other than garbage 
collection, do you as a user care?  I certainly don't think about 
whether the object will be managed with reference counts, controlled 
types, or global garbage collection when I use Unbounded_String. All I 
need to know is that it works, and works means no storage leaks.

If I don't want heap allocation, I can use Bounded_String where the RM says:

AdaRM A.4.4(106): Implementation Advice

      Bounded string objects should not be implemented by implicit 
pointers and dynamic allocation.

And as I said in another post, if I want to use similar memory 
management for arrays of Long_Float, I use Unchecked_Conversion. 
(Actually I use a record with the array bounds AND an Unbounded_String 
object.)

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

"Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality 
can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." -- George Washington