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Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:50:53 -0500
From: John Prevost <j.prevost@gmail.com>
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To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Possibility of Nested Classes and Nested Inheritance?
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On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:59:07 +0100, J=F8rgen Hermanrud Fjeld <jhf@hex.no> w=
rote:
> It seems to me that inner classes can always be written as
> parametric classes, which means that OCaml could easily support
> inner classes.  Is this correct? Are there other intrinsic
> reasons why OCaml does not have inner classes, except of course
> that it would take an effort to implement, which I understand.

One typical feature of inner classes that you will never see in O'Caml
is access to the private state of the surrounding class.  On the other
hand:

class a (xa : int) =3D
    object
      val mutable xb =3D xa
      method get_x =3D xb
      method set_x x =3D xb <- x
      method new_b () =3D object
        method get_x =3D xb
        method set_x x =3D xb <- x
      end
    end;;


Here you see that you can create an object in which the fields of the
containing object are in scope.  But this inner object is not a class,
so it cannot be inherited from.

Anyway, I will look at the rest of your email and look up the papers
your mention some time later.

John.