inherit without calling parent class constructor?

[Jeff Shannon]

Christian Dieterich wrote:

> On Dé Céadaoin, Ean 26, 2005, at 17:09 America/Chicago, Jeff Shannon wrote:
> 
>> You could try making D a container for B instead of a subclass:
> 
> 
> Thank you for the solution. I'll need to have a closer look at it. 
> However it seems like the decision whether to do "some expensive 
> calculation" or not is delegated to the exterior of class D. Different 
> classes that instanciate D would need to know what has been going on 
> elsewhere. That might complicate things.

True, in the sense that B is instantiated as soon as a message is sent 
to D that requires B's assistance to answer.  If the "decision" is a 
case of "only calculate this if we actually want to use it", then this 
lazy-container approach works well.  If the decision requires 
consideration of other factors, then it's a bit more complex -- though 
one could write that logic into D, and have D throw an exception (or 
return a sentinel) if it decides not to instantiate B at that time. 
This then requires a bit more checking on the client side, but the 
actual logic is encapsulated in D.

And really, I don't see where the container approach shifts the 
decision any more than the descriptor approach does.  In either case, 
the calculation happens as soon as someone requests D.size ...

(However, from your other descriptions of your problem, it does sound 
like a property / descriptor is a better conceptual fit than a 
contained class is.  I mostly wanted to point out that there are other 
ways to use OO than inheritance...)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International