weiner@novavax.UUCP (Bob Weiner) (09/13/89)
I have read through Object-Oriented Software Construction but have not used Eiffel or seen any of the implementation-dependent information on this subject, so please pardon any lack of understanding displayed. The Eiffel syntax for encapsulating foreign routines seems incredibly simple to permit the kind of flexible use of pre-existing software that I am envisioning. How does one encapsulate a C routine that includes pointer variables as parameters? What if these are pointers to an arbitrary C structure? How does one map between the foreign language's data types and Eiffel's? Take a double precision variable in Fortran. Does one need to know the bit length of such a variable in order to ensure that the precision stays the same into and out of Eiffel? Has anybody encapsulated a decent set of numerical classes in Eiffel? This would provide a good set of examples of how to do this sort of work. (Please include appropriate examples if possible.) How does Eiffel support the varargs construct commonly used in today's C programs? How does Eiffel deal with differences in the order of evaluation of arguments in different languages when encapsulating code from another language? Has anyone ever done any significant amount of manual optimization on a C package generated as Eiffel output? What is typically needed to port such C code to another platform? Thanks for any help. -- Bob Weiner, Motorola, Inc., USENET: ...!gatech!uflorida!novavax!weiner (407) 738-2087