EiffelBase2

Overview

EiffelBase2, currently under development, is a general-purpose data structures library for Eiffel. It is intended as the future replacement for the EiffelBase library ("Classic EiffelBase" in this document), which has for many years played a central role in Eiffel development.

Design goals

The design goals for EiffelBase2 are:

• Verifiability. The library is designed to allow proofs of correctness.

• Full contracts. Partly as a result of the verifiability goal, but also for clarity and documentation, the contracts associated with classes and features should describe the relevant semantics in its entirety.

• Simple and consistent hierarchy, in particular avoidance of descendant hiding and of "taxomania" (classes not representing a meaningful abstraction, unnecessary inheritance links).

• As in Classic EiffelBase, application of a systematic classification (a theory) of fundamental data structures.

• Full traversal mechanisms, based on external cursors (with internal cursors also provided when useful).

• Client-interface compatibility with corresponding classes in Classic EiffelBase, whenever it does not conflict with the preceding goals.

Status

Development of EiffelBase has started as a project at ETH Zurich; see the project page. Documentation and other material will soon be transferred to the present page.