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Re: Bugzilla
- From: dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)
- To: dewar at gnat dot com, zack at codesourcery dot com
- Cc: dberlin at dberlin dot org, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org,gdr at integrable-solutions dot net, neroden at twcny dot rr dot com
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:28:07 -0500 (EST)
- Subject: Re: Bugzilla
> The historical use of "(il)legal code" in the BTS has been "the
> compiler should (not) produce an object file from this input."
> "(In)valid" has been taken as synonymous but politically preferred,
> since no *law* is violated by buggy source code. I think this
> encompasses both Ada's "illegal" and "erroneous", although I'm not
> sure whether all categories of "erroneous" Ada programs require
> compile-time errors.
They definitely do not, such a requirement would be hard to meet by anyone
who has not figured out how to solve the halting problem :-)
For example, it is erroneous to make a recursive call at run-time if you
have used pragma Restrictions (No_Recursion).
Indeed erroneous is reserved in Ada for those situations where it is not
practical to require compile-time errors. If a compile-time error is
required, then the program is illegal, not erroneous.