Friday 16 November 2012

RTTI (Runtime Type Information)

RTTI
RTTI is the abbreviation for runtime type information ("type information at run-time"), a term used in software development and is part of various programming languages​​.

RTTI allows the runtime to determine the type of an object. Thus, a program during its execution to determine which concrete class an object belongs to which a particular reference shows. Without this mechanism, "knew" the program at this point is that a copy of any class is referenced, which is derived from the base class. With this mechanism, it "knows" what class belongs the referenced object.

While RTTI is a very simple mechanism, which typically provides only the name of the concrete class, there are more modern programming languages ​​in the mechanism of reflection, and it also allows for information about other properties of a class at runtime to determine, for example, the names signatures of its methods.

Example

So be example a reference to a copy of the base class "business partner" given by the two concrete subclasses "customer" and "supplier" are defined. With type information at run time, the program can find out whether a particular business partner is a customer or a supplier.

Features of RTTI:-

  • In Java, the type information is provided at run-time by using the "getClass" which is a reference to a so-called class object back that knows including the name of the concrete class.
  • Object Pascal is one of the is operator is available. You can also query Class Info, Class Type and Class name of an object.

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