Re: Ada and pointers

[hfrumblefoot@yahoo.com (Hambut)]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in message news:<9ldto7$9pg$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...
> Well, the statement is true enough because after all, dynamic allocation and
> the things done by pointers are really a kind of fiction. Memory is
> basically one big array that you index with integers, so obviously, a
> non-dynamic/non-pointer solution must exist. Anything you do with pointers
> could be implemented with a one dimensional array and integer indexes -
> because that's what the compiler translates it into.
> 

Well the statement that pointers can be mimic-ed through other
mechanisms is certainly true enough, and I agree with your other
points but........

I was thinking about the dynamic allocation aspects - if you can't or
don't want to bound the memory used then it becomes difficult to see
how you could work without dynamic memory allocation (which is,
admittedly, not precisely related to pointers - but they provide a
popular way of getting access to dynamically allocated memory).

Of course this is all fairly non-specific, but in terms of a formal
mathematical proof - well (and here's a leap into the unknown coupled
with thinking aloud, so feel free to flame the rest of this...)
wouldn't this mean that you'd somehow have to prove that all
algorithms had bounded memory use?  This seems a hard thing to do (and
I'm not precisely sure this would completely prove that pointers can
be disregarded - for example what about alias-ing capabilities?)

That said I agree that in a practical sense you can probably do
without pointers, albeit with some effort and discomfort.

Cheers,

Hambut