Re: Does memory leak?

[fjm@ti.com (Fred J. McCall)]

In article <3kopao$ekg@nef.ens.fr> sands@clipper.ens.fr (Duncan Sands) writes:

>Does Ada leak memory?  I would like to believe it doesn't, but
>how does it manage not to (without having to use unchecked
>deallocation)?

Unless you use unchecked deallocation, there is no guarantee that Ada will 
clean up your memory.  It is *allowed* to, but isn't required to (from my 
reading of the Ada83 Standard, anyway).  I had *thought* that even 
Unchecked_Deallocation wouldn't guarantee that it was released, but it looks 
like it does.  The Standard is worded somewhat ambiguously in this case, since 
it says that the result of doing an Unchecked_Deallocation is an *indication* 
that the storage should be reclaimed, but does not seem to guarantee that the 
Ada runtime system will do anything about that indication.

[Hence, if we assume that Unchecked_Deallocation really does mean that the 
memory is recovered (rather than merely indicating that it should be), it is 
*designers* who leak memory, not Ada.  What day is it, again?]