From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on
	ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_05,MSGID_SHORT
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1
Date: 15 Jan 92 14:04:07 GMT
From: mcsun!sun4nl!cwi.nl!guido@uunet.uu.net  (Guido van Rossum)
Subject: Re: Multiple Inheritance in Ada 9X/Pointers?
Message-ID: <5137@charon.cwi.nl>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

rosen@cyclope.enst.fr (Jean-Pierre Rosen) writes:
>Of course,Ada lets you easily hide that a structure is implemented by pointers
>into the depth of a package body, provided you distinguish between Abstract
>data types with object semantics and those with value semantics. On the other
>hand, I can't imagine how you could effectively do that in C/C++: the ultimate
>representation "percolates" all the way to the end user. For example: can you
>imagine you can explain someone the behaviour of strings in C/C++ without
>mentionning that a string is nothing but a pointer to character?

True for string meaning "char*", but that's inherently a low-level
concept in C++.  You can easily implement a string class with either
object or value semantics.

--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@cwi.nl>
"All right, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame."