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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again,
 Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation)
Date: 1996/10/29
Message-ID: <dewar.846609336@merv>#1/1
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references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com>
 <Dz2B9H.9HD.0.-s@inmet.camb.inmet.com>
 	<ROGOFF.96Oct10095045@sccm.Stanford.EDU> <325D7F9B.2A8B@gte.net>
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 <554c5d$4ag@nntpa.cb.lucent.com>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-29T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Kenneth says

"I suspect that automatic garbage collection is required to implement
unbounded strings efficiently.  In Icon, the assignment "b := a" can
be performed by simply copying a pointer."


This is an unjustified generalization from one benchmark. There are two
ways of handling unbounded strings, copy on modify and copy on assignment.
It is trivial to write a benchmark that will kill the ICON copy on 
assignment model, you just chose something which was the other way round.