Objective C definition
<language> An object-oriented superset of ANSI C by Brad
Cox, Productivity Products. Its additions to C are few and
are mostly based on Smalltalk. Objective C is implemented
as a preprocessor for C. Its syntax is a superset of
standard C syntax, and its compiler accepts both C and
Objective C source code (filename extension ".m").
It has no operator overloading, multiple inheritance, or
class variables. It does have dynamic binding. It is
used as the system programming language on the NeXT. As
implemented for NEXTSTEP, the Objective C language is fully
compatible with ANSI C.
Objective C can also be used as an extension to C++, which
lacks some of the possibilities for object-oriented design
that dynamic typing and dynamic binding bring to Objective
C. C++ also has features not found in Objective C.
Versions exist for MS-DOS, Macintosh, VAX/VMS and
Unix workstations. Language versions by Stepstone,
NeXT and GNU are slightly different.
There is a library of (GNU) Objective C objects by
R. Andrew McCallum <mccallum@cs.rochester.edu> with similar
functionality to Smalltalk's Collection objects. It
includes: Set, Bag, Array, LinkedList, LinkList,
CircularArray, Queue, Stack, Heap, SortedArray,
MappedCollector, GapArray and DelegateList. Version: Alpha
Release. ftp://iesd.auc.dk/pub/ObjC/.
See also: Objectionable-C.
["Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach", Brad
Cox, A-W 1986].
(1999-07-10)
Nearby terms:
Object Exchange « object identifier « Objectionable-C « Objective C » Objective CAML » Objective Modula-2 » Objective PASCAL
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