Object-Oriented Computation in C++ and Java: A Practical Guide to Design Patterns for Object-Oriented Computing

6. Families of Interacting Numeric Types

6.1. Beyond the patterns

The numeric data types we’ve been developing have been increasingly complicated:

• Chapter 3 introduced simple classes with no unit of measure.

• Chapter 4 introduced classes that obeyed the additive pattern.

• Chapter 5 introduced pairs of related numeric classes that obeyed the point-extent pattern.

Now we’re ready to complete the picture with a discussion of more-general families of interacting numeric classes. Earlier chapters presented examples both from business or commercial applications and from scientific or engineering applications. This chapter focuses on the latter, but you won’t need an engineering or higher mathematics background to understand the concepts and techniques. ...