Please see below ...
Joe.
-----Original Message----- From: Frank Heckenbach [SMTP:frank@g-n-u.de] Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 9:29 PM To: gpc@gnu.de Subject: Re: gcc-3+
da Silva, Joe wrote:
Excuse me, but I think that's more of a prejudice here. What the compiler does internally relies heavily on tree structures. These require pointers in *any* language -- though some languages hide the fact. Pascal doesn't hide it, so the tree handling code and the resulting memory management problems would be exactly the same if GPC was written in Pascal.
Other typical usages of pointers in C, such as for strings, are relatively few in GCC/GPC, and are not the problem.
[Joe da Silva]
My comments were general and relate to the excessive reliance of C on pointers, whereas Pascal often avoids them with safer alternatives, such as "var" parameters, etc.
As much as I share your dislike of C in general, let's try to keep to the point. The use of explicit pointers instead of `var' parameters does not affect the memory management situation (if used properly, but I think GCC does so). Memory management is used with malloc() in C or New in Pascal, and those routines yield explicit pointers, anyway.
[Joe da Silva]
Yes, you are right. Sorry for straying a bit off-topic (no pun intended;-). Of course, memory leakage and stray pointers are two separate problems.
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