On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Shaleh wrote: > How is the STL shipped then. We do not have access to its code do we?? >
First off, since it's an official part of Debian, yes, we must have access to the code somehow. But aside from that, yes, _any_ template library that someone provides for developers to use must be provided in source code form. The standard templates shipped with MSVC/C++ are all shipped in source code form. The best way I've found to think of templates is as compiler macros. (no, I didn't say pre-processor macros, I said compiler macros - this means that templates are more intelligent than preprocessor expansions). They don't actually generate any code until they are invoked; this is because the code they could generate can't really be determined ahead of time - how is the compiler going to know ahead of time whether 'a + b' occuring in a piece of template code will eventually refer to one of the builtin meanings of addition, or to a function of the form type type::operator+(type arg) or a function of the form type operator+(type a, type b) ? The short answer is that the compiler can't know - C++ allows so many results from similar-looking code that the compiler just can't compile templates by themselves. However, once a template is instantiated, then the compiler can go ahead and determine the basics of what the code means. This is why splitting templates into header and .c files doesn't make much sense, any more than it would make sense to try to pre-compile preprocessor macros. (This is just one of the reasons why I find templates nasty to work with, and really prefer to work in a language that is completely object-oriented - the use of templates always seems ridiculously arcane to me) -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
