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From: Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Properties
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 10:53:41 -0800 (PST)
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Date: 2010-12-04T10:53:41-08:00
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On Dec 4, 7:23=A0am, "Peter C. Chapin" <PCha...@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote:
> On 2010-12-04 00:35, Shark8 wrote:
>
> > Just a quick question, but why was it necessary to have two sets of
> > containers, one for the indefinates and one for the definites?
>
> Each instance of an indefinite type can have different sizes. For example
>
> procedure Example is
> =A0 =A0S1 : String(1 .. 10);
> =A0 =A0S2 : String(1 .. 100);
> begin
> =A0 null;
> end Example;
>
> S1 and S2 occupy different amounts of memory. The indefinite containers
> deal with this by using access values internally. That is an indefinite
> vector of strings actually stores String access values (pointers) and
> manages that extra indirection internally so you aren't exposed to it.
> This allows strings of different sizes to be stored in the vector in a
> uniform way. The price is extra overhead and slightly less efficiency.
>
> Class wide types are also indefinite because an instance of a class wide
> type can be one of several different types in the class (all with
> potentially different sizes).
>
> Peter

Ok, I suspected this was the answer but wanted to make sure.
Thank you for verifying it.