An object‐oriented class library for C++ programs
Keith E. Gorlen · Software Practice and Experience · 1987
Abstract The Object‐Oriented Program Support (OOPS) class library is a portable collection of classes similar to those of Smalltalk‐80 that has been developed using the C++ programming language under the UNIX operating system. The OOPS library includes generally useful data types, such as String, Date and Time, and most of the Smalltalk‐80 collection classes such as OrderedCtn (indexed arrays), LinkedList (singly linked lists), Set (hash tables), and Dictionary (associative arrays). Arbitrarily complex data structures comprised of OOPS and user‐defined objects can be stored on disk files or moved between UNIX processes by means of an object I/O facility. The classes Process, Scheduler, Semaphore and SharedQueue provide multiprogramming with coroutines. This paper gives a brief introduction to object‐oriented programming and how it is supported by the C+ + programming language. An overview of the OOPS library is also presented, followed by a programming example. The implementation details of two of the class library's more interesting features, object I/O and processes, are described. The paper concludes with a discussion of the differences between the OOPS library and Smalltalk‐80 and some observations based on our programming experience with C++ and OOPS.