[Newbies] 'locking' an object

[Bert Freudenberg]

Am 02.10.2008 um 10:26 schrieb Randal L. Schwartz:
>
> But the debugger doesn't have any special privileges, and it can  
> clearly
> access every inst var, regardless of whether accessors exist or not,  
> through
> the magic of #instVarAt: and friends.

There is no magic in #instVarAt:. It exists merely for helping  
debugging.

> So code would merely have to execute the equivalent of the  
> primitives behind
> #instVarAt: and #instVarAt:put:, and no amount of wrapper class  
> would help.


That is not correct. There are no primitives that modify/access  
*other* objects. That would break encapsulation.

All you need to do to prevent the debugger from accessing instance  
variables is overwriting the methods the debugger invokes.

- Bert -