METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SUPPORTING MULTIPLE MOBILE ADDRESS SCHEMES USING OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

A method and apparatus are disclosed that support multiple mobile address types using object-oriented programming techniques. A mobile address object class supports the creation of mobile address objects. The mobile address object class includes the test-and-branch code that supports each mobile address type. A CPA Mobile Address class allows mobile address information to be stored in CPAMA objects in a uniform manner. The CPA Mobile Address class provides the address retrieval functionality to map the stored mobile address information to a suitable format. The CPAMA class provides a set of constructors to create and initialize its data members using an appropriate format, such as an access channel format or an ANSI International Mobile Station Identifier format, and a set of destructors to de-initialize objects before they are destroyed. The address information can be extracted from a CPAMA object using a set of member functions. Member functions to test equality and to assign one mobile address object to another are also provided.