From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Re: Where are returned values stored?
Date: 7 Jun 2004 07:09:57 -0600
Date: 2004-06-07T07:09:57-06:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <tjsXkypBlsee@eisner.encompasserve.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: fpadncjkKI4MV17dRVn-uQ@comcast.com
In article <fpadncjkKI4MV17dRVn-uQ@comcast.com>, "Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net> writes:
> This is a "meta-point" that needs to be made again and again. Ada
> compilers use many 'solutions' that assume that "under normal
> circumstances" performance will be fine. Normal circumstances for Ada
> includes decent software engineering practice. There are lots of
> 'newbie' questions, like this one, where the answer has to reference
> software engineering practice to describe WHY things are done the way
> they are done.
>
> In this case, the assumption is that in Ada, functions do not normally
> return 'large' objects, but that large is defined in terms of
> performance in the execution environment, not some arbitrary limit. So
> if a program uses some function that returns a multi-megabyte String, in
> some execution environments this will be a problem. But if Integer is a
> 32-bit type, the language will allow you to try to return a 2 Gigabyte
> String. On most hardware, you will fail, but if you are running your
> program on a 64-bit system with more 4 Gigs of memory, performance won't
> be bad at all.
Merely having hardware capable of 64-bit addressing does not speed the
copying of that 2 Gigabyte string, so performance might be awful. On
the other hand, there is a greater likelyhood the program will run to
completion, which is a correctness issue.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-06-07 13:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 25+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-05-26 19:46 Where are returned values stored? (follow up to yesterday's question) James Alan Farrell
2004-05-26 20:44 ` Simon Wright
2004-05-27 7:51 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2004-05-27 9:39 ` Where are returned values stored? Marius Amado Alves
2004-05-27 17:05 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-05-27 20:24 ` James Alan Farrell
2004-05-28 20:33 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-05-29 7:03 ` Martin Krischik
2004-05-29 13:19 ` Larry Kilgallen
2004-05-30 7:10 ` Martin Krischik
2004-06-02 3:14 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-05-30 21:17 ` Nick Roberts
2004-05-31 12:58 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-06-02 4:07 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-06-02 12:42 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-06-03 2:00 ` Nick Roberts
2004-06-03 4:34 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-06-03 16:06 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-06-03 16:13 ` Nick Roberts
2004-06-07 1:53 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-06-07 13:09 ` Larry Kilgallen [this message]
2004-06-09 7:03 ` Robert I. Eachus
2004-06-05 17:13 ` Simon Wright
2004-05-27 17:11 ` Martin Krischik
2004-05-27 17:07 ` Where are returned values stored? (follow up to yesterday's question) Martin Krischik
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