Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bony1!richieb
From: richieb@bony1.uucp (Richard Bielak)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Storing C pointers in Eiffel code
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.144434.9345@bony1.uucp>
Date: 14 Dec 90 14:44:34 GMT
References: <1039@tetrauk.UUCP> <1990Dec5.171420.22935@bony1.uucp> <1047@tetrauk.UUCP> <18527@rasp.eng.cam.ac.uk>
Reply-To: richieb@bony1.UUCP (Richard Bielak)
Organization: Bank of New York
Lines: 30

In article <18527@rasp.eng.cam.ac.uk> nhr@eng.cam.ac.uk (Neil Russell) writes:
>How about using a builtin type ADDRESS (a al Modula-2).  In modula-2
>the type ADDRESS is compatible with any pointer type (analogously
>class type in Eiffel), and in addition to assignment, arithmetic may be
>performed on values of type ADDRESS permitting the construction of
>memory managers.

To make this more like Modula-2, perhaps there should be a class
SYSTEM, that contains things like ADDRESS, and other hardware
dependent types (BYTE, WORD, LONGWORD etc) and function (eg.
get_address_of_something)

>A not totally unrelated defficiency of Eiffel is the inability to
>define formal enumeration types.

Although I'm not sure exactly why, but enumeration type present some
difficult problems to the compiler when types are extended through
inheritance. My evidence? Look at OBERON, latest language from N.
Wirth, it does not have enumerated types.


..richie



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