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Double Dispatch
In software engineering, double dispatch is a special form of multiple dispatch, and a mechanism that dispatches a function call to different concrete functions depending on the runtime types of two objects involved in the call. In most object-oriented systems, the concrete function that is called from a function call in the code depends on the dynamic type of a single object and therefore they are known as single dispatch calls, or simply virtual function calls. Dan Ingalls first described how to use double dispatching in Smalltalk, calling it multiple polymorphism. Overview The general problem addressed is how to dispatch a message to different methods depending not only on the receiver but also on the arguments. To that end, systems like CLOS implement multiple dispatch. Double dispatch is another solution that gradually reduces the polymorphism on systems that do not support multiple dispatch. Use cases Double dispatch is useful in situations where the choice of computation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' programmer'' is sometimes used as a synonym, but may also lack connotations of engineering education or skills. Engineering techniques are used to inform the software development process which involves the definition, implementation, assessment, measurement, management, change, and improvement of the software life cycle process itself. It heavily uses software configuration management which is about systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration and code throughout the system life cycle. Modern processes use software versioning. History Beginning in the 1960s, software engineering was seen as its own type of engineering. Additionally, the development of soft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Name Mangling
In compiler construction, name mangling (also called name decoration) is a technique used to solve various problems caused by the need to resolve unique names for programming entities in many modern programming languages. It provides a way of encoding additional information in the name of a function, structure, class or another datatype in order to pass more semantic information from the compiler to the linker. The need for name mangling arises where the language allows different entities to be named with the same identifier as long as they occupy a different namespace (typically defined by a module, class, or explicit ''namespace'' directive) or have different signatures (such as in function overloading). It is required in these use cases because each signature might require different, specialized calling convention in the machine code. Any object code produced by compilers is usually linked with other pieces of object code (produced by the same or another compiler) by a type ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Design Patterns
In software engineering, a software design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. It is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into source or machine code. Rather, it is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. Design patterns are formalized best practices that the programmer can use to solve common problems when designing an application or system. Object-oriented design patterns typically show relationships and interactions between classes or objects, without specifying the final application classes or objects that are involved. Patterns that imply mutable state may be unsuited for functional programming languages. Some patterns can be rendered unnecessary in languages that have built-in support for solving the problem they are trying to solve, and object-oriented patterns are not necessarily suitable for non-object-oriented langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virtual Table
In computer programming, a virtual method table (VMT), virtual function table, virtual call table, dispatch table, vtable, or vftable is a mechanism used in a programming language to support dynamic dispatch (or run-time method binding). Whenever a class defines a virtual function (or method), most compilers add a hidden member variable to the class that points to an array of pointers to (virtual) functions called the virtual method table. These pointers are used at runtime to invoke the appropriate function implementations, because at compile time it may not yet be known if the base function is to be called or a derived one implemented by a class that inherits from the base class. There are many different ways to implement such dynamic dispatch, but use of virtual method tables is especially common among C++ and related languages (such as D and C#). Languages that separate the programmatic interface of objects from the implementation, like Visual Basic and Delphi, also t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hash Function
A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. The values returned by a hash function are called ''hash values'', ''hash codes'', ''digests'', or simply ''hashes''. The values are usually used to index a fixed-size table called a ''hash table''. Use of a hash function to index a hash table is called ''hashing'' or ''scatter storage addressing''. Hash functions and their associated hash tables are used in data storage and retrieval applications to access data in a small and nearly constant time per retrieval. They require an amount of storage space only fractionally greater than the total space required for the data or records themselves. Hashing is a computationally and storage space-efficient form of data access that avoids the non-constant access time of ordered and unordered lists and structured trees, and the often exponential storage requirements of direct access of state spaces of large or variable-length keys. Use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiple Dispatch
Multiple dispatch or multimethods is a feature of some programming languages in which a function or method can be dynamically dispatched based on the run-time (dynamic) type or, in the more general case, some other attribute of more than one of its arguments. This is a generalization of single-dispatch polymorphism where a function or method call is dynamically dispatched based on the derived type of the object on which the method has been called. Multiple dispatch routes the dynamic dispatch to the implementing function or method using the combined characteristics of one or more arguments. Understanding dispatch Developers of computer software typically organize source code into named blocks variously called subroutines, procedures, subprograms, functions, or methods. The code in the function is executed by ''calling'' it – executing a piece of code that references its ''name''. This transfers control temporarily to the called function; when the function's execution has co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visitor Pattern
In object-oriented programming and software engineering, the visitor design pattern is a way of separating an algorithm from an object structure on which it operates. A practical result of this separation is the ability to add new operations to existing object structures without modifying the structures. It is one way to follow the open/closed principle. In essence, the visitor allows adding new virtual functions to a family of classes, without modifying the classes. Instead, a visitor class is created that implements all of the appropriate specializations of the virtual function. The visitor takes the instance reference as input, and implements the goal through double dispatch. Overview The Visitor design pattern is one of the twenty-three well-known '' Gang of Four design patterns'' that describe how to solve recurring design problems to design flexible and reusable object-oriented software, that is, objects that are easier to implement, change, test, and reuse. What ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Static Type Checking
In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer program, such as variables, expressions, functions, or modules. A type system dictates the operations that can be performed on a term. For variables, the type system determines the allowed values of that term. Type systems formalize and enforce the otherwise implicit categories the programmer uses for algebraic data types, data structures, or other components (e.g. "string", "array of float", "function returning boolean"). Type systems are often specified as part of programming languages and built into interpreters and compilers, although the type system of a language can be extended by optional tools that perform added checks using the language's original type syntax and grammar. The main purpose of a type system in a programming language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflection (computer Science)
In computer science, reflective programming or reflection is the ability of a process to examine, introspect, and modify its own structure and behavior. Historical background The earliest computers were programmed in their native assembly languages, which were inherently reflective, as these original architectures could be programmed by defining instructions as data and using self-modifying code. As the bulk of programming moved to higher-level compiled languages such as Algol, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, and C, this reflective ability largely disappeared until new programming languages with reflection built into their type systems appeared. Brian Cantwell Smith's 1982 doctoral dissertation introduced the notion of computational reflection in procedural programming languages and the notion of the meta-circular interpreter as a component of 3-Lisp. Uses Reflection helps programmers make generic software libraries to display data, process different formats of data, perform seri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eiffel (programming Language)
Eiffel is an object-oriented programming, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer (an object-orientation proponent and author of ''Object-Oriented Software Construction'') and Eiffel Software. Meyer conceived the language in 1985 with the goal of increasing the reliability of commercial software development; the first version becoming available in 1986. In 2005, Eiffel became an International Organization for Standardization, ISO-standardized language. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method. Both are based on a set of principles, including design by contract, command–query separation, the uniform access principle, uniform-access principle, the Single choice principle, single-choice principle, the open–closed principle, and option–operand separation. Many concepts initially introduced by Eiffel later found their way into Java (programming language), Java, C Sharp (programming language), C#, and other langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C Sharp (programming Language)
C# (pronounced ) is a general-purpose, high-level multi-paradigm programming language. C# encompasses static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines. The C# programming language was designed by Anders Hejlsberg from Microsoft in 2000 and was later approved as an international standard by Ecma (ECMA-334) in 2002 and ISO/IEC (ISO/IEC 23270) in 2003. Microsoft introduced C# along with .NET Framework and Visual Studio, both of which were closed-source. At the time, Microsoft had no open-source products. Four years later, in 2004, a free and open-source project called Mono began, providing a cross-platform compiler and runtime environment for the C# programming language. A decade later, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code (code editor), Roslyn (compiler), and the unified .NET platform (software framework), all of which support C# and are free, open ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visitor Pattern
In object-oriented programming and software engineering, the visitor design pattern is a way of separating an algorithm from an object structure on which it operates. A practical result of this separation is the ability to add new operations to existing object structures without modifying the structures. It is one way to follow the open/closed principle. In essence, the visitor allows adding new virtual functions to a family of classes, without modifying the classes. Instead, a visitor class is created that implements all of the appropriate specializations of the virtual function. The visitor takes the instance reference as input, and implements the goal through double dispatch. Overview The Visitor design pattern is one of the twenty-three well-known '' Gang of Four design patterns'' that describe how to solve recurring design problems to design flexible and reusable object-oriented software, that is, objects that are easier to implement, change, test, and reuse. What ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
