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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Pass a serial port as user data in a GTK callback handler?
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 11:07:47 +0000
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Date: 2014-02-20T11:07:47+00:00
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"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> Note that pool-specific access types are a bit safer in general,
> because you can (with effort, admittedly not usually done) make
> deallocation safe.  Whereas with general access, even if you have a
> valid (non-dangling) access object, you can't figure out whether it is
> safe (and necessary) to deallocate it or if you should just drop it on
> the floor. And if you get that wrong, you have storage leaks or
> erroneous execution.
>
> At least in Ada 2012 you can create a convinient smart pointer
> abstraction that takes care of all of that. Probably we ought to have
> considered adding such a thing to the standard library.

Most of the component libraries that started life with Ada 95 include
smart pointers. I must admit that my effort wasn't convenient or very
safe (access values were visible, and the user was expected not to
deallocate them).