[chuck-users] object / class hacking

[Robert Poor]

Chucksters:

Three questions in one message (generally a bad idea, but they're  
short):

[1] Accessing class name from an object

I seem to recall seeing a way to get an object to yield its class  
name, if only for printing.  But I haven't been able to locate the e- 
mail thread where that was discussed.  Was I hallucinating?  (I really  
only want this for debugging, but if it's a supported function, it may  
be useful for dispatching on class type.)

[2] initializing an object

Is there a subclassable method that is called when you instantiate an  
object?  or do have to instantiate then initialize manually, as in:

public class Foo {
	Controller @ c;
	fun void init(Controller c) { c @=> this.c }
}
Foo foo;
foo.init(x);

[3] "natural" sorting of objects

Is there any attribute of an object that you can reliably use as a  
sort key?  I ask because I want to speed up searching of an array of  
objects (e.g. to see if an object is already present).  As I  
understand it, I can't use a hash array since there are no iterators.

I guess the question should be: what's the fastest way to maintain a  
*set* of objects (i.e. a collection in which an object may only appear  
once) with the usual operations for insertion, deletion and iteration?

TIA.

- rob