Process and apparatus for manipulating a boundless data stream in an object oriented programming system.

摘要

A process and apparatus for manipulating boundless data streams in an object oriented programming system (11) provides a stream class of objects which includes as attributes an ordered list of object references to selected ones of the data objects stored in the data storage device (14). Methods for manipulating the object include move to first. move to last. move to next and move to previous which provide a bi-directional data stream. The data appears to the user as though it resides entirely in memory, even though it does not. The stream class implements a "sliding window" in an object oriented programming system which permits manipulation of any number of lists of virtually unlimited size when remaining within the physical limitations of finite storage.