Re: List Container Strawman 1.4

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Yeah, I suppose you could just start adding new elements to the list with
the Singleton subprogram. I guess I'm one of those guys who likes to
explicitly clear things out - especially dynamic data structures when I'm
done with them. Presumably, that would make the storage available for some
other dynamic data structure, if its implemented right. Assuming
finalization and handling things properly with scope, I realize this may not
be strictly necessary - but I like to know I can clear the structure and
reclaim the storage any time I just get that uncontrollable urge to do so.

This might be more of an embedded thing than a workstation-app thing. I know
that in my current domain, the OS may request the app minimize itself to
gain back storage needed for some other app. Here, you want to be able to
say "Hey, here's this collection of stuff I was saving, but I suppose I
could go reload it when I need it, so here you go - have my storage and I'll
get it back later..."

An alternative might be to define a constant called Null_List that could be
assigned to a List and force it to get cleared out. This is not unlike
Null_Unbounded_String and would be keeping in the flavor of mirroring
Ada.Strings.Unbounded wherever possible.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:kbLU7.7081$XC5.9293@www.newsranger.com...
>
> When do you need to actually deal with a null list? If its just a matter
of
> reusing the list object for a new set of values, then you can do that by
using
> one of the constructor functions.
>