🚀 go-pugleaf

In a message dated 1 Aug 90, dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) wrote:

 > So I was severely disappointed to discover that the "List" module presented 
 > does not in fact deal with lists in the abstract, but with lists of things 
 > of type "ItemType" which is imported from some other module.  So in a 
 > typical real-world program, if I have three types of things that I want 
 > lists of, I need three (almost but not quite identical) copies of the List 
 > module as presented. 

Umm, gee, Dave, maybe I'm missing the point, here, but isn't this where a variant record would come in real handy?  As in

TYPE
   ThingType = ( aThing, anotherThing, lastThing ) ;
   ItemType = RECORD
      CASE ThingType OF
         aThing:
            fields for a thing
            |
         anotherThing:
            fields for another thing
            |
         lastThing:
            fields for last thing
      END  (* case *)
   END ;

Maybe I just misunderstood your problem, but using the above definition, one copy of the "List" module would handle three widely different types of things.

Chip


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