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From: heintze@peewee.enet.dec.com (Sieg Heintze)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Parameterized Classes
Summary: What is Status of Parameterized Classes?
Keywords: Generic, Class, Parameter
Message-ID: <13056@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 3 Jul 90 16:50:31 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 28

I heard a rumor that there was an article on Parameterized classes in Jan/Feb 
JOOP by Bjarne.  What is JOOP?  Where can I get a copy?

What I want to do is (for example) write a single matrix multiplication routine
that can be used  with single precision, double precision, single precision
complex, double  precision complex (or any other data type I might dream up in
the future)  matrix elements.

I suppose what I could do is, define a class that could contain any of these 
elements (via a union statement) and then, at run time, case off a integer 
element that tells me what the type of the contents is.   This greatly 
increases the storage requirements and makes the execution time slower.  Not a 
good solution!

There is another language I can do this in (I will not name it here for fear 
of being excommunicated).   It seems ironic  to me that everyone says that this 
(unnamed) language is not really OO since it does not have inheritance.

Anyway, does Bjarne plan to add this feature into C++?  I did not see it in 
the list of of new features for C++ V2.1.

                                               Sieg

heintze@genral.enet.dec.com
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