Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!Apple.COM!lsr
From: lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: experience with tp5.5?
Message-ID: <2971@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 21 Jul 89 21:00:30 GMT
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Objects-R-Us,  Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 32
References:<799@eutrc3.urc.tue.nl> <390004@hpctdls.HP.COM>

In article <390004@hpctdls.HP.COM> wei@hpctdls.HP.COM (Bill Ives) writes:

>     The constructor and destructor methods must be called when the object
>     contains virtual methods or unpredicable result may occur.  Even if 
the
>     object is statically allocated and is then assigned to another object

This is pretty bad, in my opinion.  If you are going to define the concept 
of constructors and destructors, you should also have them called 
automatically.  This is one of the nice features of C++, and it is 
unfortunate that Borland didn't recognize it as a good feature.  In C++ 
you can be sure that the internal state of an object is always consistent, 
because the constructor would have been called.

>      mine := ^myptr ; { assign dynamic var to the static var }
>      mine.Init(2) ; { initialize the static var }

The fact that you have to call the constructor after an assignment is a 
very serious deficiency.  It makes it more difficult to deal with objects 
than with other types.  Presumably, you wanted to make a copy of the 
object in this case, so how do you know what to pass to the constructor?   
This is changing the meaning to assignment as applied to objects.

(A question.  What if you pass an object as a parameter.  Does the called 
routine have to call its constructor?)


Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc.
Object Specialist

Internet: lsr@Apple.com   UUCP: {nsc, sun}!apple!lsr
AppleLink: Rosenstein1