Re: Flexible Strings (was Equality operator...)

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

John Volan said

<<Erik Magnuson wrote:

> Robert, your claim is a little broad here. I have used 2 different Ada 83
> compilers runtimes for embedded targets that did NOT implement any storage
> reclamation for Unchecked_Conversion, i.e., UC simply set the pointer to>>

(UC => UD as per later clarification)


For an Ada 83 compiler with a narrow intended target of use (embedded
targets), this may not be a bad choice. Many coding standards for high
reliability code allow dynamic allocation, but do NOT allow dynamic
freeing (the former is safe and easy to analyse, the latter potentially
dangerous and very hard to analyze).

So, I can certainly see that this choice might make sense for such a
compiler. I was really thinking in terms of general purpose Ada 83
compilers when I made the statement.

But in any case, the storage pools of Ada 95 give a much greater level
of control. For examle, in the embedded case, you could use the storage
pools to

a) completely forbid deallocatoin
b) ignore deallocation
c) implement an alloc/free that had bounded time behavior

etc.