On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Andy Wardley wrote:
> chromatic wrote:
> > The thinking at the last design meeting was that you'd explicitly say
> > "Consider this class closed; I won't muck with it in this application"
> > at compile time if you need the extra optimization in a particular
> > application.
>
> In Dylan, this is called a sealed class. It tells the compiler that it's
> safe to resolve method names to slot numbers at parse time, IIRC. Seems
> like a nice idea.
We'll probably have an optimizer setting for this so you can declare
classes sealed at the end of compilation. Parrot'll have to have a means
of yelling loudly (and probably throwing a fatal exception) if you try and
alter a sealed class at runtime.
This'll likely be a language-dependent setting, as some languages will
seal classes by default, which makes some amount of sense in some
circumstances.
Dan
