Andrew Hughes wrote: > The hardest thing would seem to be the generics (Java's templates -- is > it or me or does it seem strange that Java 1.5/5.0 is basically bringing > back in lots of C++ features, mainly as a result of C# having them?).
It's you :) Java has had generics on the cards for a long time - too long, but that's another story - since before C# existed. C# didn't define generics initially either - have they added it yet? Java Generics is nothing like C++ templates except for the <> syntax. You could say that a key goal for Java generics was to NOT provide something like C++ templates. :) > Generics are added to a lot of the core classes, notably java.util's > collections. Would adding this mean that compilers and code would need > to be 1.5 ready? In principle because generics are based on type erasure, they are primarily a compile-time concept. So code that uses generics that is compiled with a 1.5 compiler may be runnable on a non-1.5 JVM. That said, some of the information is stored in the extensions to the class file format for run-time introspection (don't know the details of what you can and can't do here). So compiling with generics tends to produce class files that won't be understood by non-1.5 supporting VM's. I suspect you would need a compiler that knows how to compile generics whilst producing a non-1.5 specific class file. David Holmes _______________________________________________ Classpath mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/classpath
