Jerome Vouillon <vouillon@clipper.ens.fr>:

> On Fri, 10 May 1996, Thorsten Ohl wrote:
> > Sure, it us possible to do it.  But, IMHO, class variables should be
> > declared in the class and be opaque.  
> > ...
> > I'm just curious if (and why) this syntactic sugar has been left out
> > intentionally.
> 
> It has not been left out intentionally. Many object-oriented languages 
> (C++, Objective C and Modula 3, for instance) do not have class variables, 

C++ does have class variables but since everything is renamed in C++
they are called static member variables or static data members or ... .

> ... they can be easily simulated using references as you noticed.

Why not make class variables exactly that,  slots of the class object?

-D