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From: jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Abstract vs. Template classes
Message-ID: <6590308@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 19 Oct 89 17:09:23 GMT
References: <21000004@inmet>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 10

Hm, I always thought the "whole" idea of the C++ approach, and templates in
particular, was to avoid the additional gratuitous indirections present in
other OOPLs, thus retaining C-like speed.  In which case "template" needs to
be a macro-like implementation, with little capabilities for machine-code reuse.

I would think one could "fake" genericity via "gratuitous-indirection"
relatively trivially by coercing the type of pointer used in derived classes.
And in fact using pointers may be a reasonable approach if what being pointed
to is large.  To get reasonable performance if what is pointed to is small,
you need to use templates to avoid the indirection completely.