Re: segfault with large-ish array with GNAT

[tmoran@acm.org]

> So here's me being naive: I would have thought that Ada (or GNAT
> specifically) would be smart enough to allocate memory for large
> objects such as my long array in a transparent way so that I don't
> have to worry about it, thus (in the Ada spirit) making it harder to
> screw up. (Like not having to worry about whether arguments to
> subprograms are passed by value or by reference--it just happens.)
>
> But it seems that I will have to allocate memory for large objects
> using pointers (and thus take the memory from the heap). Is that
> right?
  A couple of years ago I wrote some code to look at the (large) Netflix
data set.  It used Janus Ada and ran in a 2 GB Windows system.  I thought
about switching to Gnat (for faster floating point) but discovered that
would require changing all large arrays to heap allocation, so I dropped
that idea.  IMO, that's a ridiculous limitation in this day and age.