[Laszlo-dev] defining classes in any order in LZX

[P T Withington]

This should be fairly easy. We already allow forward references to  
classes when instantiating them. It would just mean delaying  
completing the model until you need it, rather than at the time you  
parse it.

On Feb 11, 2009, at 16:22, Henry Minsky <henry.minsky at gmail.com> wrote:

> Currently the way the LZX compiler works, this code gives an error
> "undefined superclass foo for class bar"
>
> <class name="bar" extends="foo"/>
> <class name="foo"/>
>
>
>
> because the compiler parses classes internally in the lexical order
> they occur in the source, and foo is not defined
> yet when it tries to compile bar.
>
> However, we could make the compiler do a pass that stores the class
> declarations and parses them on demand
> so that the order you declare them lexically doesn't matter.
>
> I guess we've gotten this far without the compiler doing this for you,
> but I'm wondering if it would
> be a useful thing to do, considering that other object oriented
> languages generally seem to allow
> it.
>
> -- 
> Henry Minsky
> Software Architect
> hminsky at laszlosystems.com