Re: Implementation of "class inheritance" in a compiler

Gioele Barabucci <dev@gioelebarabucci.com> wrote in message news:04-09-072...
> Hi,
>
> may you suggest me some readings (web, books, magazines) that examplain how
> compilers can implement classes (memory layout...), templates and
> inheritance in compiled languages like C++ or Java? There are many
> tradeoffs between memory occupation, compile-time performance and runtime
> performace; I'd like to know how the various researchers solved these
> problems.
>
> Usually the standards don't mandate a precise implementation, so compilers'
> writers must have deal with these problems. Are there papers or books that
> on this topics that reports their attempts?


At least in C++ there is not much choice in implementing classes and
inheritance. I would suggest examining the output of a C++ compiler -
it is pretty straight forward.


As for Java, the JVM specification should give you a pretty good idea
of the possibilities. There a more choices there, so you could look at
existing open source implementations like SableVM (www.sablevm.org) or
my personal favorite JCVM (http://jcvm.sourceforge.net/).


HTH,
Tzvetan
[I gather that the C++ committee has considered standardizing the form
of dispatch tables and class structures since they're all nearly the
same anyway. -John]

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