Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: type/member tags (was Re: asking an object for its type)
Message-ID: <71091@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 91 20:32:39 GMT
References: <27C95D3A.1715@tct.uucp> <1991Feb27.154311.782@csc.ti.com> <27CD159D.6581@tct.uucp> <1991Mar5.143615.5847@csc.ti.com>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 19

In article <1991Mar5.143615.5847@csc.ti.com> peterson@choctaw.csc.ti.com (Bob Peterson) writes:
|  I see the need for a standard mechanism for accessing a class
|instance's type.  I believe a general mechanism, similar in spirit to
|the property lists found in Lisp, would support not only type
|information, but the needs of other enhanced facilities such as
|programming environments.  I'd like to see the compiler insert into
|each class a static member function that returns a pointer to a singly
|linked list of pointers to a class instance.  The class pointed to
|would have defined only a virtual function returning a descriptor.  The
|descriptor would describe the sort of information the actual instance
|contained, e.g., a description of a type.  Users would be able to
|derive from the language-specified class description expanded classes

....

Seems we're getting hung up arguing details of compiler implementation
rather than issues of language definition.  How should run-time
type information be represented in the language -- as opposed to in the
resulting executable?