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From: olag@beli.ifi.uio.no (Ola Fosheim Grøstad)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: Pattern names- how to get?
Date: 29 Apr 1996 17:31:07 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
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Message-ID: <4m2ucr$v68@glitnir.ifi.uio.no>
References: <3180DC48.5319@daimi.aau.dk>
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In article <3180DC48.5319@daimi.aau.dk>,
	Kim Jersin <jersin@daimi.aau.dk> writes:
>How do I get a texttual representation of a pattern?

I suppose the distribution/persistence system is what you want?

But, I've recently finished a project where I gave all major objects
methods for returning their contents in a "semi-readable" format, as
well as methods for reading this format from at text(stream) and
detecting when they have read all they need. To achieve this I had
to implement my own versions of integer, lists etc.. This is a fairly
powerful concept, as composite objects only need to know about these two
methods. If all "textual" objects have a common subpattern with these
methods as virtuals, then that is all it needs to know. (there is an
additional requirement, of course, they should either agree on some
kind of reserved separator sign (for instance left and right parantheses)
or let the first entry in the text describe the size of this part of
the structure.

But this is perhaps not what you tried to ask for?
-- 
* Ola Fosheim Groestad  (http://www.ifi.uio.no/~olag) *