validation stringency

validation stringency

[Richard Draves]

I recently came across a limitation on how complicated a type
declaration pcc will accept.  I don't remember any similar
nesting restrictions in the Ada standard.  Are Ada implementations
required to allow unlimited nesting?  Does the validation suite
make some sort of attempt to check this?

Rich
-- 

	"a picture in the head is a gory murder in an art gallery"

					-- Stephen Kosslyn

Re: validation stringency

[Norman Diamond]

> I recently came across a limitation on how complicated a type
> declaration pcc will accept.

Yuk.  OK, I guess a portable C program can't nest type declarations more than
one level?

> I don't remember any similar
> nesting restrictions in the Ada standard.  Are Ada implementations
> required to allow unlimited nesting?  Does the validation suite
> make some sort of attempt to check this?
> -- Rich

I also believe that unlimited nesting ability is required.  But if the
compiler runs on a machine with a limited address space (either real or
virtual, it is limited), we can expect some limits.  If a limit is too
small, a reasonable validation suite would find out.  If a validation
suite tried a thorough test, we probably wouldn't live long enough to
see it hit a limit....
-- 

   Norman Diamond

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