Re: stupid question: how can I finish a program?

[tmoran@acm.org]

> forcing an Ada program to terminate?"

  The problem is that "terminate" is ambiguous.  Do you mean terminate
the current task?  The task and all its children?  All tasks in the
program?  Do you want Finalization to occur or not occur?  All, or just
some?  If the code module that wants to terminate is in fact a reusable
component, should it really terminate the whole program and all its
tasks, or just the single component.  What should happen when a
procedure designed as a whole program is used instead as a single
procedure in some larger program.  Should the larger program terminate?
  I'm inclined toward raising an unhandled exception.  That gives the
overall program the option of an "others" handler to limit the "extent
of termination".  Of course it also means "others" shouldn't be used
casually.  One problem with a piece of code that aborts the environment
task is that it might be called from some other task, which would then
continue, with great confusion for all.
  Probably most people asking the question just want to terminate the
single (environment) task in the simple program, with Finalization
occurring, and an unhandled exception does that nicely.