I keep on hearing high level programmers refer to wrappers in their programs... What are they? And how do they benefit your code? Thanks -Cecil

A Wrapper is simply a technique of encapsulating a lot of code into a class which can be easily used afterwards with a few of the class'' functions... the benefit is that your code is easily maintainable and it looks neater... Many people create wrappers for DirectX since it''s a real mess to work with all those functions/constants and naming convention and so on...

so a wrapper for DX would be something like this..

    class CDirectX{  CDirectX(){};  ~CDirectX(){};  public:    // usually functions which operate on the private variables or just execute general code..  private:    // all the variables that you dont want to be accessible by others};    

then you can create some smaller class into CDirectX which would separate DirectDraw from DirectInput and so on.. you get the idea...

..-=ViKtOr=-..

quote:
I keep on hearing high level programmers refer to wrappers in their programs ... What are they? And how do they benefit your code?

even though C is a high level language it's not an OO langy and is not all that high anyways... it's closer to ASM... and we're talking about IN PROGRAMS wrappers...

considering that C is not OO, putting all the code into functions wouldn't make it a wrapper (well not exactly)... it would be modularity then, which is refered to putting all the functions that are part of the same device system into a single module... even though you can CALL IT a wrapper, it's not.. my own opinion.. at least i wouldn't call that a wrapper... where as encapsulating everything into classes would be more acceptable to be called a wrapper...

bosco, yes, there are programs that encapsulate other programs (usually DOS/COnsole type proggys)... just like most OO compilers do... but i think you are talking about plug-ins?!?!?!

anyways...

Edited by - Gladiator on July 6, 2000 3:11:42 PM