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From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ 2.0 Question -- Whats wrong with this code ??
Summary: Actually this could now be a reference...
Message-ID: <1152@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 20 Oct 89 12:26:06 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 36

In article <1532@tukki.jyu.fi> sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative) writes:

    [ ... ] According to the reference manual, 'this' is a _constant_ pointer
    (to the current class object) in Release 2.0, which it wasn't
    in previous releases. [...]
    
    Assignment to 'this' in constructors and destructors for the purpose
    of programmer-controlled memory allocation and deallocation was
    a badly structured hack to start with. In Release 2.0 it has been
    replaced by the possibility to redefine the operators 'new' and
    'delete', which is much better and cleaner. [ ... ]

It has occurred to me that if BS had hit upon the idea of having overloadable
'new' and 'delete' earlier, instead of the assign-to-this-in-constructor hack,
'this' should have been a reference. Now it is a constant pointer, which
is nearly the same, except for the use of '->' instead of '.' to access
members.

I have been thinking also that if 'this' were made a reference, then it would
be possible to dispense with the concept of member procedure entirely;
any 'friend' of a class with a first parameter of type reference to that
class could be invoked indifferently as

		a_friend(obj,arg1,arg2)

or

		obj.a_friend(arg1,arg)

etcetera, which is similar to what is possible in POP-II. Naturally it would
be possible to allow the latter syntax also for non friends, but I opine that
it ought to be reserved only to friends.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk