Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pdn!tscs!tct!chip From: chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: asking an object for its type Message-ID: <27D57565.2B22@tct.uucp> Date: 6 Mar 91 23:04:05 GMT References: <1991Feb20.232710.7843@ithaca.uucp> <1485@acf5.NYU.EDU> <71037@microsoft.UUCP> Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL Lines: 30 According to jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK): >C++ should actively support runtime type testing because the issue keeps >coming up again and again and it takes great difficulty for individual >applications to create it for themselves. I most certainly would _not_ agree that dynamic typing needs to be added just because "the issue keeps coming up". Maybe lots of people are making similar errors. Lots of Smalltalk, Objective C, CLOS, etc. programmers are converting to C++, and they are looking for language features like those of their previous languages so they can keep programming in the ways to which they are accustomed. This fact is not surprising. What they do not realize, however, is that C++ programming does not always admit of Smalltalk/Objective C/CLOS/etc. strategy. Some of them eventually get a clue. Many, however, never give up in trying to force the square C++ peg into the round dynamic-type-test hole. >The implication being that run-time type testing requires an interpreter- >like approach, or that adding run-time type testing turns C++ into >a Smalltalk or a CLOS. I disagree. It would not transform C++ into Smalltalk, true. But it would be a move in that direction, a move which is, in my opinion, entirely unnecessary. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , "All this is conjecture of course, since I *only* post in the nude. Nothing comes between me and my t.b. Nothing." -- Bill Coderre