Ada speed vs. C...

[William Thomas Wolfe, 2847]

>From grimlok at hubcap.clemson.edu (Mike Percy):
> Yawn...and maybe when I get back from lunch my [Ada] compile will be done.  
> "All I did was correct a misspelling in a comment in the linked-list 
> package specification..."  Ooops. 

   When you submit a program unit for compilation, the compiler has to
   assume that if all you wanted was to change a comment and get a compiler
   listing, you would have had the sense to do the compilation in a temporary
   program library rather than recompile a fundamental specification and
   thereby invalidate everything (probably the entire software system) that
   was compiled against that particular specification.  

   If you had changed something substantive, then the recompilation would 
   be necessary in order to propagate the effects of the change throughout 
   the system.  It would have to be a fundamental semantic or syntactic 
   change, since if it were merely an implementation detail the effects 
   would have been confined to the package body.   

   (Followups to comp.lang.misc...)


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe at hubcap.clemson.edu