Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!culdev1!drw
From: drw@culdev1.UUCP (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.c
Subject: software ICs vs. libraries
Message-ID: <1745@culdev1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Nov-87 19:26:33 EST
Article-I.D.: culdev1.1745
Posted: Wed Nov 11 19:26:33 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 05:06:41 EST
Organization: Cullinet Software, Westwood, MA, USA
Lines: 29
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.misc:890 comp.lang.c:5379

I may be talking through my hat, but...

peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
| In article <1691@culdev1.UUCP>, drw@culdev1.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes:
| > Another feature of "software ICs" comes from the fact that they are
| > part of an object-oriented system.  One can actually write, say, a
| > linked list manager that will work on objects of *any* type.  In most
| > languages, this is impossible to do in a library routine.
| 
| You can do it in 'C'. In fact the standard 'C' library for the Amiga comes
| with exactly this tool.
| 	Insert(ListHead, ListNode, PredNode)
|       [etc.]

Well, I'll bet not.  You can do a lot with macros, and if you're only
dealing with pointers to things, you can cast to (char *), but
consider a somewhat messier example where these two tricks don't work.
Say, a priority queue system, where the priorities aren't of a type
fixed in advance.

Of course you can *do* any of these in C by representing anything
messy as a (char *) pointing at it, but this is just implementing an
object-oriented system...

Dale
-- 
Dale Worley    Cullinet Software      ARPA: culdev1!drw@eddie.mit.edu
UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!culdev1!drw
If you get fed twice a day, how bad can life be?