Objects and Actors
The standard library contains the two types core.Object and core.TObject. These are the types
that all other class types and actor types in the system inherit from. That is, all class types
inherit from core.Object, and all actor types inherit from core.TObject.
Object
The type core.Object contains the following members:
-
core.Str toS()Create a string representation of the object. The default implementation simply calls
toS(StrBuf)to create the string representation. -
void toS(core.StrBuf to)Create a string representation, and write it to the provided string buffer. The default implementation outputs the type of the object and its current address. Note that the address may change during the lifetime of the object, so it is not a stable identifier.
Many types in the system provide some form of string representation to aid debugging. The preferred method of providing a string representation is to override this version of
toS. -
void deepCopy(core.CloneEnv env)Used to provide deep copies of object.
TObject
The type core.TObject is the base class of all actors (TObject stands for "Thread
Object"). It has the same interface as core.Object, except that deepCopy does not exist (actors
typically don't need to be copied), and it instead contains the member associatedThread that
specifies which thread the actor is associated with. The associated thread is set through a
parameter to the constructor, and it is not possible to change the associated thread after creation.
Utilities
The standard library also provides the following function for comparing the types of classes. It is
useful to compare types for equivalence in a == operator, for example.
-
core.Bool sameType(core.Object a, core.Object b)Do the two objects
aandbhave the same dynamic type?
The following functions allow inspecting the dynamic type of objects. They are located in core.lang:
-
core.lang.Type typeOf(core.Object o)Get the run-time type of a heap-allocated object.
-
core.lang.Type typeOf(core.TObject o)Get the run-time type of a heap-allocated object.