[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: Q: member syntax in dylan?
On Thursday, May 10, 2001, at 10:45 am, Roland Paterson-Jones wrote:
> Is there any intrinsic reason not to allow 'obj . member' syntax for
> methods
> with more than one argument in dylan?
>
> e.g. obj . m ( o1 , o2 , o3 , o4 )
This means "call the return of calling m on n with (o1, o2, o3, o4)". It
expands to:
let meth = m( obj );
meth( o1, o2, o3, o4 );
> Is there any intrinsic reason against allowing definitions of methods
> closely coupled with class definition?
>
> e.g. with <class>
> define method m1 ( a1 , a2 ) ... end
> end
It's a nice construct, but misleading: it gives pression that m1() is
just dispatching on (<class>) rather than all its arguments. Methods
aren't owned by objects in Dylan, they're owned by generic functions.
The closest C++ gets to this is "friend", and Java just can't do it IIRC.
>
> Please forgive all errors, I'm just starting to look at dylan for the
> first
> time.
No problem. This is the right place for questions. :-)
- Rob.
References: