Just a point on this highly debated problem. There are in fact 2 different and complementary problems to solve: 1) The ability to write, once for sall, a package for Lists (or any other structure) of one (but ANY) type T of objects, with the lowest adaptation cost for a specific type t. This first problem is solved by GENERICITY in the Ada sense (see for instance my own Fortran 90/95 Data Structures book). 2) For a given list (be it generic or not), the ability to mix different kind of objects in it. Solutions are: 2.1) use of TRANSFER function, as exposed through the Mail discussion. 2.2) simulate a variant derived type for the above type T (the "generiic parameter" of the List Data Structure). Note that both problems make sense only in a typed language. In a typeless language such as Lisp, you simply define a List structure, and objects in it are of any kind. Hope this helps to "resume" (RESUMER in french) the discussion?... --------------------------------------------------------- * Patrice LIGNELET tel : 01 40 27 22 58 * * MEl: [log in to unmask] 23 83 * * Sur la Toile mondiale (le Ouaibe): * * http://www2.cnam.fr/~lignelet * * * * Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers * * Departement d'informatique fax : 01 40 27 23 77 * * 292, rue Saint Martin (\ * 75141 PARIS CEDEX 03 ( \ =========================================================) ) /> / ) / //))/ \ \_/ ///// \ / \_ / | | | | ----- ----- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%