Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!super!rminnich From: rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula3 Subject: Re: running out of memory Message-ID: <42601@super.ORG> Date: 11 Feb 91 14:47:34 GMT References: <9102080401.AA29237@jumbo.pa.dec.com> Sender: news@super.ORG Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie, Md. Lines: 30 In article doug@snitor.uucp (Doug Moen) writes: >In article <9102080401.AA29237@jumbo.pa.dec.com> gnelson (Greg Nelson) writes: >> ... >>The report should have defined this to be a checked runtime error. >>If you want to allocate all available memory without crashing, you >>have to use a lower-level, implementation-dependent interface. >I strongly disagree. The report should have defined this to raise >an exception. It is worth remembering that 13 or so years ago the choice was between a real low-level language (C) and a nicer language (from many points of view) Pascal. It is amazing how similar the arguments are back then and now between, e.g., Mod 3 and C++. Some of them are identical (initialization, for example)! Problem was, Pascal tended to blow your program out of the water on failed file opens, failed memory allocs, and so on. While Pascal was nice from many points of view, its unrealistic model for programming (e.g. if you can't alloc, die) rendered it useless for most people, and, sad to say, C won. I hope the same mistakes are not repeated in Modula 3. Failed memory allocation should be an exception. Just about anything that can go wrong should be able to be handled by the program. ron -- "Socialism is the road from capitalism to communism, but we never promised to feed you on the way!"-- old Russian saying "Socialism is the torturous road from capitalism to capitalism" -- new Russian saying (Wash. Post 9/16)