Chapter 14: Classes and Objects

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14.1 Chapter Overview

Many modern high level languages support the notion of classes and objects. C++ (an object version of C), Java, and Delphi/Kylix (object versions of Pascal) are good examples. Of course, these high level language compilers translate their source code into low level machine code, so it should be pretty obvious that some mechanism exists in machine code for implementing classes and objects.

Although it has always been possible to implement classes and objects in machine code, most assemblers provide poor support for writing object-oriented assembly language programs. Of course, HLA does not suffer from this drawback, as it provides good support for writing object-oriented assembly language programs. This chapter discusses the general principles behind object-oriented programming (OOP) and how HLA supports OOP.