Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!blake!keffer
From: keffer@blake.acs.washington.edu (Thomas Keffer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Variable sized objects
Message-ID: <4798@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 89 22:26:49 GMT
References: <1020@dutrun.UUCP> <10213@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: keffer@ocean.washington.edu (Thomas Keffer)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 23

In article <10213@alice.UUCP> shopiro@alice.UUCP (Jonathan Shopiro) writes:
>In article <1020@dutrun.UUCP>, ben@duttnph.tudelft.nl (Ben Verwer) writes:
>> How do you implement variable sized objects in 2.0
>
>Operator new is supplied to support controlling where memory is
>allocated for objects, not how much memory is allocated.  The trick
>described in ``the book'' is non-portable, implementation-dependent,
>and generally a bad idea.  Objects in C++ are always fixed-size.

Is this now the official "party line"?  I.e., the "trick" in The Book
is just that, and there will be no upwards compatibility from it?

Variable sized objects are used extensively in the Rogue Wave Vector
and Matrix Clases --- if they're an evolutionary dead-end I'll take
them out.

-tk

---
 Dr. Thomas Keffer          | Internet: keffer@ocean.washington.edu
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