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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Finalization and Garbage Collection: a hole in the RM?
Date: 1996/09/07
Message-ID: <dewar.842087719@schonberg>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 179055140
references: <mazzanti-0609960944120001@mac-mazz.iei.pi.cnr.it>
 <DxBJ4C.FJy@world.std.com>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-09-07T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Bob said

"I think the impl-def result has to be a valid, non-abnormal value of the
type."

Absolutely, anything else makes no sense. Note that in all cases leaving
something to be implementation dependent expects a reasonable choice. 
There is no particular reason to try to pin this down in the RM. For
example, I would regard it as a waste of time to worry about whether the
above rule is in the RM or not.

>From a practical point of view, people expect that an implementation
dependent choice be reasonable.

For example, if in my Annex M I write:

  The value used for Count'Max depends on the stars at the time of the
  compilation, if aries is in the ascendent then.... (500 more lines of
  gobbledygook written by Nancy Reagan's astrologer).

then I am technically compliant, but this is no more reasonable or useful
than reutrning an abnormal result. Either compiler is obviously a piece
of junk. The RM cannot preevent a determined implementor from producing
a completely useless compiler!