Of course, programmers may use typedef or simple editing to create more appropriate names. The existence of dot seperators in file names allows the use of GNU make to help automate configuration and recompilation. The genclass utility operates via simple text substitution using sed . One dubious virtue of the prototyping mechanism is that, because sources files, not archived library classes, are generated, it is relatively simple for programmers to modify container classes in the common case where slight variations of standard container classes are required. The test subdirectory of the distribution shows an example of this.
Many container classes require specifications over and above the base class type.
For example, classes that maintain some kind of ordering of elements require specification of a comparison function upon which to base the ordering. While these macros default to perform reasonable actions, they can and should be changed in particular cases. Most prototypes require only one or a few of these. No harm is done if unused macros are defined to perform nonsensical actions. Nearly all prototypes container classes support container traversal via Pix pseudo indices, as described elsewhere.