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The metaclass of Metaclass is called Metaclass class which again is an instance of class Metaclass. In Smalltalk-80, every class (except Object ) has a superclass . The abstract superclass of all metaclasses is Class , which describes the general nature of classes.
Before a class derived from an abstract class can be instantiated, all abstract methods of its parent classes must be implemented by some class in the derivation chain. [25] Most object-oriented programming languages allow the programmer to specify which classes are considered abstract and will not allow these to be instantiated. For example ...
Each class is an instance of the metaclass of that class. Metaclasses in turn are also objects, and are all instances of a class named Metaclass. Classes contain method dictionaries that map selectors (the equivalent of function procedure names in other languages) to method objects, objects that are executed to evaluate messages.
Modern object-oriented languages, such as C++ and Java, support a form of abstract data types. When a class is used as a type, it is an abstract type that refers to a hidden representation. In this model, an ADT is typically implemented as a class, and each instance of the ADT is usually an object of that class.
In the case of arrays, access is done with the array index. In the case of stacks, access is done according to the LIFO (last in, first out) order and in the case of queues it is done according to the FIFO (first in, first out) order; storage, that is the way of storing the objects of the container;
In languages supporting multiple inheritance, such as C++, interfaces are implemented as abstract classes. In languages without explicit support, protocols are often still present as conventions. This is known as duck typing. For example, in Python, any class can implement an __iter__ method and be used as a collection. [3]
In class-based object-oriented programming, abstract types are implemented as abstract classes (also known as abstract base classes), and concrete types as concrete classes. In generic programming , the analogous notion is a concept , which similarly specifies syntax and semantics, but does not require a subtype relationship: two unrelated ...
C appears to support assignment of array pointers, but in fact these are simply pointers to the array's first element, and again do not carry the array's size. [citation needed] In most languages, data types are not first-class objects, though in some object-oriented languages, classes are first-class objects and are instances of metaclasses.