As a further demonstration of composition, there is an initial foray into designing and implementing a general container class. A general container is different from an array because it can hold different types. A general container is different from a cell array because all objects must descend from the same parent. For example, a general cShape container can hold both cStar and cDiamond objects because they both use cShape as a parent. A container is also different from a cell array because a container has a structure-like interface. The interface makes a container behave a lot like an object array. Rather than looping over each element in the container, clients can use vector syntax. Often the loop still exists; however, it is now hidden behind the container's interface. Developing a set of standard containers compatible with the general computer-engineering literature or with National Institute of Standards (NISI) definitions would be an enormous undertaking. The primary goal of the paper is to demonstrate one potential use of composition. A secondary goal is to produce a container that might be useful as is, or at least produce a container that can be easily improved.

Chapter Contents:

• 19.1 Building Containers
• 19.2 Container Implementation
• 19.2.1 The Standard Framework and the Group of Eight
• 19.2.1.1 Container Modifications to fieldnames
• 19.2.1.2 Container Modifications to subsref
• 19.2.1.3 Container Modifications to subsasgn
• 19.2.1.4 Container Modifications to get
• 19.2.1.5 Container Modifications to set
• 19.2.2 Tailoring Built-in Behavior
• 19.2.2.1 Container-Tailored end
• 19.2.2.2 Container-Tailored cat, horzcat, vertcat
• 19.2.2.3 Container-Tailored length, ndims, reshape, and size
• 19.2.3 cShapeArray and numel
• 19.2.3.1 Container-Tailored num2cell and mat2cell
• 19.2.4 Container Functions That Are Specific to cShape Objects
• 19.2.4.1 cShapeArray times and mtimes
• 19.2.4.2 cShapeArray draw
• 19.2.4.3 cShapeArray reset
• 19.3 Test Drive
• 19.4 Summary
• 19.5 Independent Investigations

Inspec keywords: object-oriented programming

Other keywords: NISI definition; Matlab; cStar container; container composition; vector syntax; object array; cDiamond container; cShape container; container class; cell array; National Institute of Standards

Subjects: Object-oriented programming