Re: Q: access to subprogram

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Bob said

"Also, note that it depends on the language.  In my experience, Ada
programs are less deeply nested than Pascal programs.  If you don't use
much nesting, then it's clearly not a "big win" either way."

I disagree, the presence of subunits makes it practical to nest very
deeply (the nesting would have to be lexically explicit in Pascal),
and it is common practice to nest deeply this way (common does not
mean everyone or even a majority does it, just that there are quite
a few programs around written that way).

Of course an interesting point is that the difference is more extreme
for light nesting.

Suppose your organization has a main program with lots of procedures
nested inside, but no further nesting. The overhead for displays is
zero in such a program, but static links would be used all the time.

Getting an example the other way round (one that favors static links)
is difficult indeed.