Re: Ada vs. C

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

The Quelisher said

"When I compiled each of the above here are the file sizes that resulted:
        C ----> 24,576
        Ada --> 253,952"

So what? this does not prove, or even relate to your point, and it is 
certainly complete nonsense to take this observation and deduce from
it that a 6 megabyte Ada program will correspond to a 2 megabyte C program.

Why are the above figures not relevant.

First: the size of an executable file is not related to the size of the
executable program in any simple way. Two factors are of critical importance.
First, are they both stripped or not, I am willing to bet that the Ada
file was not stripped -- so why didn't you strip it to make the comparison.

Second, I would guess the Ada program is statically linked, and the C
program is dynamically linked, meaning that the space for Text_IO is
included in the Ada size you see, and the space for printf is not included
in the C file that you see.


Finally, and most importantly, these are quite different programs, one
uses the package printf, and the oher uses the package Text_IO. Yes, there
is some overlap in capability, but they are definitely not the same package,
and both contain functionality not in the other. 

If you want to persue this, first make sure you understand what stripping
is about, and also what dynamic vs static linking is about, so that these
factors do not make your observations meaningless, and then compare
programs that are comparable!