Re: concrete classes

[Victor Bazarov]

On 6/28/2015 11:34 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Just for fun I'd like to point out that the term of
> »concrete class« might have changed in Lippman's
> »C++ primer«.
>
> The edition of 2005 still defines:
>
> »A concrete class is a class that exposes,
> rather than hides, its implementation.«.
>
> This seems to comply with Stroustrups notion of »concrete
> types« (and »concrete class« in that context).
>
> But a more recent 5th edition of the »C++ primer« now seems
> to use »concrete class« in the other sense of »a class that
> is not an abstract class«, although it possibly does not
> give an explicit definition for this term anymore.
>
> A class that is not concrete but owns ressources sometimes
> is called a »resource handle«. I would use this term for
> ::std::unique_ptr, but not for ::std::string, because in
> the case of the former handling the resource is the primary
> task, but in the case of the latter the resources is just
> a means to be a variable-length (mutable) string.
>
> What kind of classes are out there?
>
> POD class
> primitive class
> regular class
> trivially copyable type
> trivial type
> standard-layout type
> canonical class
> concrete class (a term with at least two different meanings)
> abstract class
> literal class
> resource handle class
> class with value semantics
> class with reference semantics
> constexpr class
>
> Any other kind that comes to your mind?

Empty class (sometimes used to denote a type that is different from any
other type in your program).

V
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