Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Benjamin Franksen <[email protected]> · Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:55:37 +0100

On Monday 21 February 2005 17:56, Marty Kraimer wrote:
> Benjamin Franksen wrote:
> > What I want to point out is that there is one very useful
> > thing missing from the data model, namely algebraic data types, a.k.a.
> > tagged unions. A syntax could look like this
> >
> >union(name) {
> >	choice(choice_name,"choice_value",choice_data)
> >}
> >
> >where 'choice_data' can be any valid data type, including struct or
> > another union. Thus, menu would be the special case where the
> > 'choice_data' is void (or null; another basic data type to be added).
>
> Andrew also suggested a union.
>
> JAVA does not have a union. Will this cause us any problems?

Well, neither does the C union fit exactly. You have to combine it with a tag 
to discriminate cases; and the type system does not enforce any match between 
tag and data content, so in the end we'll have to implement it as an ADT.

In Java, we would have to cast the data to an 'Object' and back, according to 
the tag value. I think the implementation is in fact easier in Java than in 
C.

Ben

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System