class design question (inner classes)

[Regan Heath]

coxalan wrote:
> Regan Heath Wrote:
> 
>> What about doing it manually/explicitly...
> 
> Thanks for the code!

No problem.

> A few questions/remarks on this: * Is there a reason for overloading
> new and delete besides that you want to display the size of the
> objects?

Yep.  At first I tried using a static inner class and I wanted to ensure 
it made a difference to the size.

> * Why the member data Inner[] m_Data; in the outer class? By this no
> links are stored in the Outer objects any more, but now the Inner
> object stores links, so nothing is won. But in my opinion this line
> can simply be dropped. (Of course the other line where the links
> actually get stored must then be modified, too.)

I think I put that there because you mentioned something about needing 
to know how many Inner classes the Outer class was handling, it can be 
replaced with an int :)

> * To execute m_Outer = o; always when a new Inner object is created
> is a little overhead ;-).

:)

>> Of course, if you use Inner with another Outer class it will
>> overwrite the static m_Outer and fail horribly...
> 
>> But maybe we can get round this by using templates...
>> 
>> class Inner(T) { static T m_Outer; }
>> 
>> That way, if you use say..
>> 
>> Inner!(Outer) a; Inner!(Outer) b; Inner!(Outer) c;
>> 
>> Inner!(Bob) d; Inner!(Bob) e;
>> 
>> Inner!(Fred) f;
>> 
>> You will get a static m_Outer for each combination, thus 3 for the
>> code above.
> 
> But I guess it is still not possible to have Outer a; Outer b; and
> then Inner objects of "a" as well as of "b".

No, if both Outer and Inner are the same type for both "a" and "b" it 
won't work because the m_Outer will be overwritten with each new Inner.

> With standard D inner classes, that would be no problem.

True, but I can't see how it's possible to get what you want with inner 
classes.  If the inner class is "static" then it has no outer reference, 
but it also cannot access any non-static members of outer either.  If 
it's not static then it has an outer reference.

What you actually want is for the outer reference to be a static member 
of the outer class, but then how can the inner class find it, unless it 
has a reference to the outer class.

Regan