once again about TClonesArray

From: Pasha Murat (murat@cdfsga.fnal.gov)
Date: Wed Dec 23 1998 - 01:43:54 MET


Hi Rooters, 
	I'm not sure everybody know this so I believe that it will be very
interesting to see what Rene/Fons would say on the subject. 
	I recently rediscovered that in order to store the objects of a 
given class, say, "A" (which inherits from TObject), in TClonesArray a user 
has to run rootcint and to generate a dictionary for this class. 
Also if one wants to use TClonesArray is is necesasry to instantiate a 
TROOT object.

I recognize that TClonesArray is a very smart and intelligent container but at 
first sight it seems to be a little bit of an overkill:

- it is clear that one needs a dictionary to browse the object or to do I/O
  in split mode;
- it also looks like the significant part of functionality - namely the 
  functionality of container class itself plus the I/O in sequential mode does 
  not require a dictionary to be generated.

So my question is if there are serious reasons to disable the functionality of
TClonesArray by 100% when a dictionary for the corresponding class is not
available and the whole ROOT system is not initialized? 

						regards, pasha	



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