CSC 112b
Spring 2001
Ileana Streinu

More on class templates

• In the second part of Hw 5, you rewrote Stack as a class template. Remember that (for debugging only) you had a function to Print the contents of a stack: could you template that function? Why, or why not?
• Specialized templates. Suppose you have a template that works for all data types but one. For example, the Stack will work for integers, characters, floats, but not for CustRec, because the general templated method Print doesn't work in that case.
  Situations like this require specialized templates. It is as if you define a new class, say CustRecStack, but instead of giving it a special and different name, you do instead:
  class Stack<CustRec>
  {
  ... // a complete declaration of the class members
  }
  
  The compiler would know that this version of the Stack is intended to be used for the CustRec data type. Any time an object is declared of the type Stack<CustRec>, the compiler will use this template to generate the code, and not the general templated Stack class.
• Example. To make it easier to follow the code, I put everything in one big file, instead of splitting it into several ones which would have been included.

Using tested object files; Libraries

• Thoroughly testing the IntStack class. Example: the BadStack. Then, the GoodStack.
• Using a good stack, without ever seeing the actual code. Example: ObjectStack.
• What are libraries? Why do we include header files? Example, my own stack library StackLibrary.

In class exercise

• Copy the IntStack files from this directory (use the Unix cd and cp commands to get there and to copy the files): ../../handout/Stack/ or ~112b/handout/Stack
• Use the testdriver you wrote for Hw5, put it in the same directory with these files.
• Compile using the given object files, using only one compilation line to construct the executable code. You will design the Makefile, using the model we did in class.
• Execute, test. Does it run correctly? Is my implementation similar to yours? Does it matter?