Re: Non-philosophical definition of Eiffel?

[Berend de Boer <berend@xsol.com>]

>>>>> "Hyman" == Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

    Hyman> Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. Both C++'s
    Hyman> STL containers and Matthew Heaney's equivalent Charles
    Hyman> library in Ada have typesafe containers which involve no
    Hyman> casting, and have no wrong-way bag-of-apples is a subclass
    Hyman> of bag-of-fruit issues.

As I wasn't sure about STL, I just looked at C++ support for
covariance. Low and behold I found this:

   Covariance of Virtual Member Functions

  The implementation of virtual constructors relies on a recent
  modification to C++, namely virtual functions' covariance. An
  overriding virtual function has to match the signature and the
  return type of the function it overrides. This restriction was
  recently relaxed to enable the return type of an overriding virtual
  function to co-vary with its class type. Thus, the return type of a
  public base can be changed to the type of a derived class. The
  covariance applies only to pointers and references.

  http://documentation.captis.com/files/c++/handbook/ch04/ch04.htm#Heading18


Fortunately I'm not a C++ expert so I can't really asses your claim
that the STL container libray offers the same functionality as an
Eiffel generic container library. But I really doubt it.

-- 
Regards,

Berend. (-: