package and virtual

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Wed Feb 29 17:27:31 PST 2012


On Wednesday, February 29, 2012 17:05:19 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 07:53:54PM -0500, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > package functions are currenly non-virtual.
> > 
> > The spec claims that "all non-sta­tic non-pri­vate non-tem­plate mem­ber
> > func­ tions are vir­tual," which would mean that package is supposed to
> > be virtual. But from what I recall, the plan is to leave package as
> > non-virtual. So, is that indeed the case and the spec needs to be fixed,
> > or is package going to be made virtual at some point?
> 
> [...]
> 
> Virtual package functions would be interesting in theory... but I doubt
> there's much practical use for such things. Will packages have an
> inheritance hierarchy now?

The point of allowing virtual package functions would be to allow derived 
classes within a package to override the function but disallow it for derived 
classes outside of the package. It has nothing to do with adding an 
"inheritance hierarchy" to packages (I'm not even sure what you mean be that). 
There are similar arguments for making private virtual.

Personally, I'm absolutely fine with package being non-virtual. I'm just trying 
to verify that I'm correct in my understanding that the plan is to leave it 
non-virtual rather than to make dmd match what the spec currently says and 
make package virtual.

- Jonathan M Davis


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list