Instantiation of C++ Objects in Shared Memory

The C++ language has features that offer benefits to developers of systems using shared memory. However, instantiating C++ objects in shared memory and fully using the features in the language requires coordination among the processes accessing objects. The dynamic binding mechanism employed to support virtual functions required use of extra-lingual aspects of the AT&T C++ Release 2.0 product and the operating system. The issue needs to be addressed by the providers of any object-oriented language or environment providing dynamic binding that want to support objects in shared memory. One feature in C++ Release 2.0 that proved quite useful for instantiating objects in shared memory is the overloading of operator new and delete. C++ classes are described that provide functionality these operators need for shared memory allocation.