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From: Martin <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Primitive curiosity...
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:02:05 -0700 (PDT)
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Date: 2008-09-24T07:02:05-07:00
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On 17 Sep, 22:19, Adam Beneschan <a...@irvine.com> wrote:
[snip]
> For a tagged type, the things that need to be determined before it's
> frozen include something sometimes called the "dispatch vector" or
> "dispatch table" or something like that. =A0It's basically a table that
> contains the addresses of the primitive subprograms of the type. =A0Type
> extensions that may override those subprograms will have their own
> array with the primitive subprograms in the same slots in the array.
> Then, when you do a dispatching operation, the code generated by the
> compiler will just look in that slot in the array to see what
> procedure to execute. =A0That's how polymorphism takes place.

Those from a C++ background may think this sounds like a "vtable"...