"Pardee, Roy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But it doesn't necessarily follow from that that a class is an object,
> does it?
Types aren't values in .NET, so types are not objects, like they are in
(say) Smalltalk, and nor are they values in a higher-level class, like
they are in Delphi ("TClass = class of TObject;" => TClass is the
metaclass type, that is, the class of the TObject class and its
descendants).
Of course, .NET types may be manipulated indirectly through metadata
type handles in the form of instances of the Type type, but that's quite
different from having types that are values. One of the ramifications of
making types values is that you can have things like virtual
constructors - something that's commonly used in Delphi, but gets a
"wha???" reaction from people schooled in C++, Java, C# etc.
> Not that I mean to argue that .net classes *aren't* objects, mind you--I
> think probably they are, and the Type class is the class Class.
.NET usually prefers the term 'type' to 'class', since it less
ambiguously includes value types as well as reference types.
-- Barry
--
http://barrkel.blogspot.com/
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