sher@sunybcs.uucp (David Sher) (03/10/89)
Is there any reason why functions can be virtual but not data objects
(the implementation of a virtual data object is exactly analogous to that
of a virtual function). Here's the application:
I have a matrix package with two types of matrices and vectors.
A vector is the base class is what you'd expect.
A spaced vector is a vector which is not contiguous in memory but is
every nth element where n is given.
Similarly I have matrix and spaced matrix. So a row of a matrix is
a vector. Thus I can define
class matrix {...
virtual vector *rows; // the rows of the matrix
...
};
I also want to say:
class spaced_matrix {...
virtual spaced_vector *rows;
...
}
Currently c++ does not support this but I would think that this would
increase the orthogonality of the language, the efficiency of implementing
things like this (which would seem to be a fairly common effect the
elements of a complex subclass would be sub classes) and generally
a trivial to implement improvement. Adding it would not break anything
I can imagine and in fact should simplify the compiler considerably.
-David Sher
-David Sher
ARPA: sher@cs.buffalo.edu BITNET: sher@sunybcs
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