Re: Package Instances???

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

But why fight it? When programming in C++, the fundamental idiom is the
class - maybe with a namespace around it to isolate the identifiers &
produce better encapsulation. When programming in Ada, the fundamental idiom
is the package - which gives you encapsulation and lots of other cool
stuff - but isn't an "object" or a "type" so it can't really do what a C++
class does. It needs to contain a tagged type to complete the picture.

I don't think that C++ really has an analog for what Ada does with a
package - at least nothing that provides anything resembling a mirror image.
It has things that will give you some of the features of a package - but
because it carries so much legacy from C the whole concept of what Ada does
with a package is rather foreign and it would be difficult to add something
to C++ that would create a "package" and still maintaining upward
compatibility.

I think Ada's packages are a big advantage and a good reason to do things in
Ada instead of C++ (or C, for that matter). The encapsulation, separation of
interface and implementation and information hiding alone is worth it. You
can get something similar out of C++, sort of, if you work at it, but it
always seemed to me to be something you had to cobble together out of spare
parts in a junk drawer rather than something that was inherently engineered
into the language.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:3C7487D6.5060603@mail.com...
>
> But my purpose isn't to implement a type, it's to find a C++ analogue
> for Ada packages. C++ namespaces are useless for anything except what
> the name implies, namely establishing a namespace.
>