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- Path: news.nyu.edu!schonberg!dewar
- From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: some questions re. Ada/GNAT from a C++/GCC user
- Date: 2 Apr 1996 07:24:29 -0500
- Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
- Message-ID: <dewar.828447715@schonberg>
- References: <wnewmanDoxrCp.DKv@netcom.com> <SIMON.96Mar30153124@pogner.demon.co.uk> <315D902C.6F7B@escmail.orl.mmc.com> <Dp3G4u.KEA@world.std.com> <4jmuj5$lkh@dayuc.dayton.saic.com> <315F4A9D.7E6F@mcs.com> <4jq4vd$2s5@ferrari.NetXpress.com>
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- Glenn said:
-
- >Most folks that responded to this missed something. That it is simply
- >easier to parse source code that has all of the declarations in one
- >section while building a symbol table. They're all there in a group,
- >bundled together like in Pascal, making it much simpler to identify
- >them and enter them in the symbol table.
-
- That's simply a misconception. For correct programs, there is obviously
- no difference in the two cases from a compiler's point of view.
-
- For error recovery, the Pascal/Ada conventions are harder work for the
- compiler, because it has to try hard to identify the proper breakpoint
- between declarations and statements in mangled programs. If it gets
- confused on this point, you can get a lot of junk cascaded errors.
-
- If you have not written a compiler, you often find that your intuitions
- as to what might or might not help a compiler implementation are quite
- wrong. Even if you DO know a lot about compilers, you can find yourself
- surprised. There were restrictions in Ada 83 that were supposed to make
- life easier for the compier, but had exactly the opposite effect (e.g.,
- for most compilers, the restrictoin on subunit names, now removed in
- Ada 95).
-
-