Tag: wrapper

Ever had a problem, not being able to add more functionality to an existing class? Some languages seem to support adding functionality to an existing class but it does make it less secure and leaves a lot of dangers of maluse.

A solution could be to create a new class which inherits the original class although it can only be instanciated using a cast from an instance of the original class or instanciating providing the original instance. Also it won’t be able to override anything otherwise it couldn’t act as its base object.

A possible implementation of this idea could be:

wrapper Int_IsOdd : int {
  public bool IsOdd() {
    return this % 2;
  }
}

And it could be used in several ways:

int myInt = 100;
print ((Int_IsOdd)myInt).IsOdd();
print myInt.IsOdd();
print new Int_IsOdd(myInt).IsOdd();

The first way would be the easiest for both a reader which isn’t familiar with the extension and for the compiler to guess errors. The second would be neat to use but it would be confusing for people that cannot access the rest of the source or do not know what function is meant. The third way would be very compatible.

I wondered by myself whether normal inheritance could provide this functionality.. and it does. The only problem is that polyforism only works up and not down as the wrapper requires. (when you got a class a and b inherits of a, you can with inheritance treat an instance of b as a but you cant treat an instance of a as b which is required for the wrapper)

Also a wrapper would be more cached and not really a new instance as suggested by the way it seems to work and can already be slightly implemented in existing languages.

Maybe it’ll be put in paradox.

update – I talked with Kaja, and it will most likely be a feature of paradox