[[Property:modification_date|Mon, 29 Jul 2019 05:54:09 GMT]]
[[Property:publication_date|Tue, 09 Jul 2019 08:25:22 GMT]]
[[Property:title|Differences between ETL 2nd printing and Eiffel Software implementation]]
[[Property:link_title|ETL 2nd printing vs implementation]]
[[Property:weight|-9]]
[[Property:uuid|fc1e73f4-5646-aa41-e7fe-97dc6f3ceb04]]
{{seealso|See also: [[Differences between standard ECMA-367 and Eiffel Software implementation|Differences between standard ECMA-367 and Eiffel Software implementation]] }}
"ETL 2nd printing" refers to the book "Eiffel: The Language" (2nd printing), published by Prentice Hall.
==Added classes==
* New basic classes have been added: INTEGER_8, INTEGER_16, INTEGER_64, CHARACTER_32. INTEGER, CHARACTER, REAL, DOUBLE are aliases to INTEGER_32, CHARACTER_8, REAL_32, REAL_64. {{seealso|[[Differences between standard ECMA-367 and Eiffel Software implementation|Differences between standard ECMA-367 and Eiffel Software implementation]]}}
* New TUPLE, ROUTINE, PROCEDURE, FUNCTION, PREDICATE classes required by the agent mechanism.
==Added keywords==
* Precursor
* reference (now obsolete): a keyword to specify that a type is used as a reference type.
* agent: a keyword used by the agent mechanism.
* create: Instead of using the famous exclamation mark to create an instance of a class, you can use the keyword create. Below you will find a correspondence table between the old and the new syntaxes. The old syntax is still valid, but at some points Eiffel Software will remove it from its implementation:
** Old syntax `!! a` => new syntax `create a`
** Old syntax `!! a.make` => new syntax `create a.make`
** Old syntax `!B! a` => new syntax `create {B} a`
** Old syntax `!B! a.make` => new syntax `create {B} a.make`
* note: replacement for the keyword indexing
.
* attribute: a keyword to declare attribute body.
* attached: a keyword to specify attached types and object tests.
* detachable: a keyword to specify detachable types.
==Added semantics==
* [[ET: Genericity and Arrays|Generic creation]]
* Expression creation: you can now create an object within an expression. For example, you want to create an object and pass it as an argument to a function. Whereas you had to create a local variable, create the object and pass it to the function, you now simply need to pass to the function the creation expression. Here is a small example:
** Old method:
local
a: STRING
do
‼ a.make (10)
f (a)
end
** 'New method:
do
f (create {STRING}.make (10))
end
This is also very useful since it can improve the power of assertions.
* Mutually recursive constraints: one can now write class `A [H, G->H]` or class `B [H -> C, G -> ARRAY [H]]`. As a result, the declaration `A [D, E]` is valid only if `E` is a descendant of `D`. Similarly, the declaration `B [E, ARRAY [D]]` is not valid, if `E` is a descendant of `D`.
* [[ET: Other Mechanisms|Tuples]]
* [[ET: Agents|Agents]]
* Feature access:
local
value: INTEGER
do
value := {MY_CLASS}.value
end
The previous call is valid, if and only if:
** value is a feature representing a constant of a basic type (INTEGER, DOUBLE or CHARACTER)
** value is a C/C++/DLL external feature
** value is an IL static external feature
==Obsolete constructs==
* Explicit values should be used to specify constant attributes instead of keyword `unique`.
==Added external support==
Look at the page for [[C externals|C]] and [[C++ Externals|C++]] with the introduction of `struct` and C++ external features encapsulation.