Re: Ada memory management?

["Jeff C r e e.m" <jcreem@yahoo.com>]

"Stephen Thomas" <vianews@stephenthomas.uklinux.net> wrote in message 
news:pan.2004.10.07.10.41.56.495730@stephenthomas.uklinux.net...
> On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 12:00:42 +0200, Christoph Karl Walter Grein wrote:
>
>> procedure Does_This_Leak is
>>     type Int_Ptr is access Integer;
>>     ptr: Int_Ptr;
>> begin
>>     ptr := new Integer;
>> end Does_This_Leak;
>>
>> Of course this leaks, and imagine how much!
>
> Actually, no it shouldn't, not on a halfway-decent implementation.
> Logically speaking, a storage pool for items accessed via values of
> an access type has the same lifetime as the access type itself. In
> the above example, a new storage pool for Int_Ptr is created on
> entry to Does_This_Leak, and is removed on exit.
>
> Stephen
> -- 


Stephen is correct...But just to be clear (because this is where people (not 
Stephen) get confused is that the following
(much more common construct) would leak unless unchecked_deallocation is 
used.

package body Like_A_Sieve is

     type Int_Ptr is access Integer;

procedure Does_This_Leak is
     ptr: Int_Ptr;
begin
     ptr := new Integer;
 end Does_This_Leak;

end Like_A_Sieve;

It is a rare (though still useful) construct to be able to get away with 
having the pointer type declaration totally within a short lived procedure.

Sieve