Darren New wrote: > >> Maybe I don't understand what you mean with ADT here, but all >> languages with a decent module system support ADTs in the sense it is >> usually understood, see ML for a primary example. > > OK. Maybe some things like ML and Haskell and such that I'm not > intimately familiar with do, now that you mention it, yes.
Well, Modula and CLU already had this, albeit in restricted form. >> Classes in most OOPLs are essentially beefed-up ADTs as well. > > Err, no. There's nothing really abstract about them. And their values > are mutable. So while one can think about them as an ADT, one actually > has to write code to (for example) calculate or keep track of how many > entries are on a stack, if you want that information. Now you lost me completely. What has mutability to do with it? And the stack? AFAICT, ADT describes a type whose values can only be accessed by a certain fixed set of operations. Classes qualify for that, as long as they provide proper encapsulation. >> Not counting C/C++, I don't know when I last worked with a typed >> language that does *not* have this ability... (which is slightly >> different from ADTs, btw) > > Java? C#? Icon? Perl? (Hmmm... Pascal does, IIRC.) I guess you just work > with better languages than I do. :-) OK, I admit that I exaggerated slightly. Although currently I'm indeed able to mostly work with the more pleasant among languages. :-) (Btw, Pascal did not have it either, AFAIK) - Andreas -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
