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From: Pat.Terry@p101.f19.n490.z2.fidonet.org (Pat Terry)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Termination
Message-ID: <1009.2447FD34@dawggon.fidonet.org>
Date: 16 Apr 89 00:28:08 GMT
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In <6466@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
rjh@cs.purdue.EDU (Bob Hathaway) writes

 > Um, top-level modules are of the form:
 > 
 > MODULE x;
 >     MODULE y;
 >      . . .
 >     BEGIN (* y *)
 >       (* y. *)Initialise;
 >       ***         (* A termination block begins after *** *)
 >       (* y. *)Terminate;
 >     END y;
 >     . . .
 > BEGIN (* x *)
 >     (* x. *)Initialise;
 > ***
 >     (* x. *)Terminate;
 > END x;
 > 
 > x is a top-level module, y is a nested module and since the lifetime of 
 > a module is the lifetime of its surrounding environment, x's lifetime  
 > is the lifetime of the program and y's lifetime is the lifetime of x 
 > and transitively the lifetime of the program.  If there is no 
 > termination code construct in modules, x.Terminate would have to be 
 > called at program termination by the main program and y.Terminate 
 > would have to be called by x.Terminate, all of which can be eliminated 
 > by a termination construct similar to the *** construct in Pascal-Plus 
 > and as shown above.  

But this can also be achieved - for these top level modules - by the 
suggestion that WG13 are now making, and which started this whole 
discussion.  We seem to be talking in circles now or am I still missing
something (sorry to appear dim)?

 > I've implemented a class construct with initialization code, and 
 > termination code would be a trivial addition.  I don't see why Modula 
 > modules are any different, the initialization code is invoked at 
 > program entry for top-level modules (with elaborate pragmas:-))


How elaborate?  Do you/Can you do this all in standard modula-2 without
compiler support, SYSTEM.fiddles and so on?
 


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