ColdC

ColdC

Paradigm(s)	Prototype-based
Appeared in	1993
Designed by	Greg Hudson
Developer	Greg Hudson (and others)
Typing discipline	dynamic
Major implementations	ColdMUD, Genesis
Dialects	ColdMUD, Genesis
Influenced by	C, MOO, CoolMUD

ColdC is a programming language, originally designed for ColdMUD by Greg Hudson in 1993, but with some applications in fields unrelated to MUDs. It is a dynamically typed prototype-based object oriented system, with a syntax derived from the C programming language. It is similar to the MOO programming language in that it operates in a runtime which provides persistence (through an object database) and network access.

ColdC includes many of the attributes that made their debut with the CoolMUD system and programming language, such as:

• Instance variables ("properties" in MOO) are all private and not externally visible. Methods ("verbs" in MOO) must be written to expose them. This is similar to early object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk.
• There are no builtin properties for owner and location like in MOO. This was done partly to simplify the language and partly to permit more versatile applications.
• There are no facilities for ownership of objects or code security, as strong encapsulation permits these facilities to be written in the ColdC language itself.
• Multiple parent relationships, that is multiple objects from which an object can inherit behaviour.

In addition, there are some specific innovations that ColdC added:

• A new datatype for lightweight, immutable objects; whimsically called "frobs".
• An associative array datatype.

External links

• ColdC 1.1 Reference Manual
• ColdMUD Programmer's Reference