Re: Question about library-level functions

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

AdaMagica <christ-usch.grein@t-online.de> writes:

> On Sunday, December 16, 2012 10:43:41 AM UTC+1, Simon Wright wrote:
>> ytomino writes:
>>
>> > function alloc return access lifetime.T is
>> > begin
>> >    return new lifetime.T'(lifetime.Create);
>> >    -- lifetime.Finalize may be called here
>> > end alloc;
>>
>> I think that what's happening is that a (limited) temporary lifetime.T
>> object is created (on the heap, or perhaps the secondary stack). Its
>> access is taken for the return value, and then (because we're leaving
>> the scope) it gets finalized.
>
> Looks like so, but IMHO this is illegal. A limited object must be
> created in-place. (Of course an implementation can do as it likes and
> create first a temporary object, then copy it to the final one and
> finalize the temporary *if* the result is as though it was created
> in-place. But here, it seems like the same object is finalized twice.)
>
> What may be temporary and copied it the access value and not the
> accessed object. It's standard to create an object via an access and
> return the latter - the object must not be finalized, of course.
>
> Creating via anonymous access is evil - how can ou ever deallocate it?
> This should be verboten by the language.

OP is quite right that the code behaves properly if alloc() is declared
in a package, and misbehaves when alloc() is declared at library
level. I think this has to be a bug.

Who's going to report it?