Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!clyde!concour!marcap
From: marcap@concour.CS.Concordia.CA (Marc Pawlowsky)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: Request for your favorite OOP idea for possible implementation!
Summary: wanted  := consistency  and full copy
Keywords: OOP := clone copy deepCopy
Message-ID: <859@clyde.Concordia.CA>
Date: 29 May 89 23:53:39 GMT
References: <3720@qut.edu.au>
Sender: news@Clyde.Concordia.CA
Reply-To: marcap@concour.CS.Concordia.CA (Marc Pawlowsky)
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal Quebec
Lines: 23

In article <3720@qut.edu.au> cszthomas@qut.edu.au writes:
>	I am currently involved in some research into adding OOP
>extensions to modern modular languages.  I would value any pertinent
>ideas or theories that anyone might have as to the best manner of
>doing this and exactly what should be implemented (eg. multiple
>inheritance/single inheritance, etc.)

My pet peeves are:

1) := is inconsistent.  In both eiffel and Smalltalk := when applied
   to a primitive (integer, real, character, ...) automatically
   creates a new object, with the same value.  Yet when := is used
   for a class it creates a reference to the same object.  It would
   be nice if this inconsistency was cleared up, by having := always
   refer to the same object and not create a new one.

2) There is no true clone, deepCopy methods in either language.  By this
   I mean a method that recursively returns a new object, with all the
   instances variables also cloned (deepCopy).  This is often needed.  While
   it is possible to create such a method, I think it should be part of the
   language definition.

   A simple operator should be used (e.g. <-, or :-).