Re: Dynamic allocation in the predefined language environment

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Bob Duff" <bobduff@theworld.com> wrote in message 
news:873811cre5.fsf@theworld.com...
> Matthias-Christian Ott <ott@mirix.org> writes:
...
>>...I suppose most implementations will
>> raise a Storage_Error exception but the standard does not specify how
>> the packages are to implemented so a program could simply crash and
>> would still conform to the standard.
>
> No, running out of memory raises Storage_Error.  The implementation
> cannot "simply crash".
>
> It's true that the standard does not specify how the packages are
> implemented, but they still have to be implemented correctly.
> There's nothing in the RM that says they can crash, so they
> can't.

Right. Formally, only program executions that are erroneous can crash. So 
unless the Standard declares doing something erroneous, crashing is not an 
option. (Modulo compiler or runtime bugs, of course.)

Running out of memory has to raise some exception, and since the only 
exception defined for that case is Storage_Error, and there isn't any other 
exception defined for most of the operations in question, there really isn't 
any other choice for a correct implementation of a library. No matter what 
it does under the covers.

                                   Randy.