Re: Beginer problem: variable array size

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

Having watched the debate go on here about the subject of realtime vs
general-purpose libraries, I'd conclude that it would be pretty hopeless to
satisfy everyone's objectives. Especially if the goal is to get something
into the standard rather than simply provide a reference implementation.
From the perspective of the standard, you'd only want to specify a package
spec that *could* be made realtime enough. (No mandate for things that might
screw it up - like garbage collection) You'd almost certainly want to avoid
having a half-dozen or more different flavors of it (realtime vs
non-realtime, task-safe vs non-task-safe, static vs dynamic allocation,
etc....) End of the day, I don't think it is a sufficient excuse that the
Ada programmer wants something more thorough to justify not (and maybe
never) providing libraries.

If eventually something gets into the ARM as a standard library, that's
great. But I think it would be better to get something general-purpose
accepted as a semi-standard in a faster and more flexible manner. Get a
container library out there that is generally accepted as the official Ada
library and start experimenting with it. In a year or so, you'll know what
its weaknesses are and another cut can be made at it. Soon enough you'll
have a stable version that may satisfy 80% of the user's needs. (maybe you
trash the realtime requirement and tell us realtime guys to go pound sand.
we're no worse off than right now where if we want them we've got to write
our own.) If that's achieved, *then* you can talk about getting it into the
standard - complete with detailed descriptions of the exact, verifiable
behavior you need from everything.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Warren W. Gay VE3WWG <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote in message
news:3D8B4CC9.5020202@cogeco.ca...
>
> Whereas the Ada programmer wants a library (as a lofty goal) that can
> be used both in the general purpose world and be useful in the
> realtime world.  Based upon some of the posts I've seen over the last
> year it might be more practical to fork two different libraries for
> this reason (this has already been suggested I think). Yet, it would
> be truly nice if they both had the same general signatures where
> possible.
>