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New HeronFront with Classes and Delegations

1 reply on 1 page. Most recent reply: Jan 24, 2006 8:52 PM by Christopher Diggins

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Christopher Diggins

Posts: 1215
Nickname: cdiggins
Registered: Feb, 2004

New HeronFront with Classes and Delegations (View in Weblogs)
Posted: Jan 24, 2006 6:54 AM
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Summary
I've just uploaded the latest Heron version which now supports classes, structs and delegations
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In the previous version of HeronFront a class would have to be written in C++, and the interface (previously a "trait") would have to be written in Heron. Well that was kind of confusing to say the least, so I finally managed to get the HeronFront translator to handle classes. A Heron class looks more or less like a class in C++/Scala/Python:
class string 
{
  delegates
  {
    Stack[char] : f;
  }
  fields 
  {
    stack[char] f;  
  }
  public 
  {
    def _init(cstring x) {
      while (x != NULL) {
        push(*x++);
      };
    }    
    def _eq(self& x) : self& {
      clear();
      _plus_eq(x);
      return *this;
    }
    def _plus_eq(self& x) : self& {
      uint i=0;
      while (i < x.count()) {
        push(x[i]);
      };
      return *this;
    }
    def _plus(self& x) : self {
      return *this += x;      
    }
  }     
}
In a class all fields are private, while in a struct all fields are public. This is intended to assure that the interface of a class is only made up of functions. This may lead to other features in the future, like the ability to ellicit an interface from a class.

The _eq, _plus, and _plus_eq functions are operator overloads. The _init function is the constructor. There are a few extra neccessary semicolons (why they are needed is a very long story related to the future ability to pass code-blocks to macros).

The delegation specification automatically generates functions which forward an interface's required functions to a member field.

The latest version of HeronFront is very unstable, but I posted it to http://www.heron-language.com/downloads.html for anyone who might be using the HeronFront / YARD code base for their own work.

For the time being I have to figure out why my vlist-based string class is so much slower than the GCC standard library implementation of a string!


Christopher Diggins

Posts: 1215
Nickname: cdiggins
Registered: Feb, 2004

Re: New HeronFront with Classes and Delegations Posted: Jan 24, 2006 8:52 PM
Reply to this message Reply
> For the time being I have to figure out why my vlist-based
> string class is so much slower than the GCC standard
> library implementation of a string!

In turns out I was comparing different compilers! The speed is essentially the same, but the lines of code is a fraction of the size.

I plugged HeronFront into my C++ IDE (Dev-C++ which is for available for free at http://www.bloodshed.net/ ) and it works really well.

Anyway things are starting to roll finally, look out below!

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