Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdragon!akwright
From: akwright@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrew K. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Can we hide the private part of a class ?
Message-ID: <8825@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 88 14:47:10 GMT
References: <1358@stratus> <1988Sep29.044111.16104@utzoo.uucp> <4193@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: akwright@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrew K. Wright)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 18

In article <4193@polya.Stanford.EDU> shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) writes:
>The flip side of this is that what you say about both languages is
>wrong given a good librarian.  The librarian could maintain the
>component sizes, and at least for the client functions that would
>eliminate unneeded dependency in both languages, subject to the
>constraint that the private part be compiled first.

A problem I see here is a stubborn adherence by many people to the
conventional C-like or Ada-like view of separate compilation.  Since
the public part of a class can be generated automatically from the
private part, why force the user to enter it at all?  The compilation
system (souped-up librarian) can determine it when compiling a program,
and a tool can be provided to produce it for a reader.  Eiffel is one
existing OO language which operates this way.  The research languages
I have been working on for several years all operate this way.
-- 
Andrew K. Wright      watmath!akwright
CS Dept., University of Waterloo.