Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!phigate!prle!prles2!cstw35!vdaele
From: vdaele@cstw35.prl.philips.nl (Marc van Daele)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: explicit REPEAT ?
Keywords: REPEAT
Message-ID: <948@prles2.prl.philips.nl>
Date: 7 Feb 90 10:09:37 GMT
Sender: root@prles2.prl.philips.nl
Reply-To: vdaele@cst.prl.philips.nl (Marc Van Daele)
Organization: Centre for Software Technology, Philips Eindhoven
Lines: 28

I wonder why the explicit 'repeat parent' construction in the export list
is necessary.

Suppose a class A, and a class B inheriting from A.  
Class A exports a feature called featureOfA.
Class B has no 'repeat A' instruction nor exports featureOfA explicitly.

Now, create a:A, and b:B  in an arbitray class C.

	b.featureOfA 		is invalid.
	a:=b; a.featureOfA 	IS valid.

So even if B does not export the features of A, they still can be applied.
Why was it chosen to mention explicit this exporting of features, while
an implicit (if B inherits from A, B automatically exports all the features
that A exports) method would work as well.  In that case the difference between
the above mentioned constructions would disappear and both would be valid.

I think an implicit export of inherited features, would make the language more
straightforward.

IF this is a stupid question THEN I'm a novice eiffel user

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Van Daele
vdaele@cst.prl.philips.nl

There are 14 million Dutch people.  What a pity there are so many zeros in it.