Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!claris!apple!metaphor!dowell
From: dowell@metaphor.Metaphor.COM (Craig Dowell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Genericity at the underlying system level
Keywords: Genericity, ARRAY class, allocate, dyn{get,put}
Message-ID: <1614@metaphor.Metaphor.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 90 22:05:31 GMT
Organization: Metaphor Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 18

I'm very new to Eiffel and this newsgroup so forgive me if this is obvious
or previously discussed.

I've just gotten through Meyer's Object-Oriented Software Construction and it
makes a lot of sense.  One thing I haven't been able to grasp is how genericity
is implemented at the lowest level, though.  The following relates to p452 of
Extracts from the Eiffel Library:

Class ARRAY[T]'s Create procedure calls a C function, allocate.  The comments
say that allocate reserves an area of n integers.  How can this be generic?
To be generic wouldn't you reserve an n * (sizeof(T) equivalent) number of
bytes and have dynget and dynput index according to the sizeof(T) equivalent.
Is there some implementation dependent automagical intervention happening here
between Eiffel and C?

I guess my real question is where is the Eiffel/C interface defined?

-- Craig