Re: Ada Core Technologies announces GNATCOM

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:

> In article <wccd7nvazxw.fsf@world.std.com>,
>   Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:
> 
> > Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> >
> > > Indeed the quoted paragraph above is EXACTLY the confusion
> > > that caused this unsupportable design of the C_Pass_By_COpy
> > > pragma in the first place.
> >
> > I don't recall it that way.  I think the reasoning was that
> when people
> > conceptually want to pass a struct in C, they usually pass a
> pointer to
> > it, so we should mimic that.  Flawed reasoning, I admit.  But
> surely you
> > don't think that the designers of Ada 9X were confused about
> the
> > difference between passing by reference, versus passing the
> address of a
> > copy?!
> 
> I don't understand the above paragraph in relation to the
> C_Pass_By_Copy pragma as opposed to the RM. My quote above
> was specifically about this pragma.

Yes, I misunderstood.  I was talking about the RM.  I thought you were
saying you don't like C_Pass_By_Copy because that should be the normal
RM behavior; the pragma is to get around a bug in the RM.

So remind me: what is "unsupportable" about the design of C_Pass_By_Copy
(other than the fact that we wish it didn't have to exist at all)?

- Bob