[Newbies] >> notation

Ramon Leon ramon.leon at allresnet.com
Thu Nov 30 17:35:27 UTC 2006


> Stephane, bless you for all the great work you have done in 
> teaching Smalltalk!
> 
> I'm not anywhere near the level to appreciate Point>>#x yet. 
> I'm still grappling with what you mean by "contextual information". 
> 
> You mention the browser, how would I use it to understand the
> MyClass>>doThis statement? Or is this even a good example for 
> MyClass>>understanding
> ">>"?

What he means is >> is just something people do when they write about
Smalltalk code.  Smalltalk code isn't written in files like in other
languages, it's written in a class browser, so you can't just say

class SomeClass {
    void Method(){
      //some code
    }
}

So, by convention, when writing code in a text based format like email,
Smalltalk'ers simply put the class name before the method name and separate
them with >>

SomeClass>>method
  "some code"

It's not something you would actually do in code... Only when writing about
code.  In code, you'd simply browse to the SomeClass class, select a method
category, and then edit the empty method template, or choose an existing
method to edit.

Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com  



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