Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Suppose now that you would like the same functionality for values of type
float
. There are
several ways you could achieve this. One way is to perform the following steps to produce the
subsequent code:
Cut and paste the code for class
MyIntStack
.
Change the class name to
MyFloatStack
.
Change the appropriate
int
declarations to
float
declarations throughout the class
declaration.
class
MyFloatStack
// Stack for floats
{
int StackPointer = 0;
float
[] StackArray; // Array of float
public void Push(
float
x ) // Input type: float
{
...
}
public
float
Pop() // Return type: float
{
...
}
...
}
This method works, but is error-prone, and has the following drawbacks:
You need to inspect every part of the class carefully to determine which type declara-
tions need to be changed, and which should be left alone.
You need to repeat the process for each new type of stack class you need (
long
,
double
,
string
, etc.).
After the process, you end up with multiple copies of nearly identical code, taking up
additional space.
Debugging and maintaining the parallel implementations is inelegant and error-prone.
