Newbie Question: What is 'private'

John-Reed Maffeo rlpa80 at email.sps.mot.com
Thu Feb 18 16:13:24 UTC 1999


In my readings of various books and manuscripts in my quest for
Smalltalk Gurudom, I have read several different definitions of
what 'private' methods are.

Here is what I have found so far:

1. Private methods are methods that are being worked on and are
	not yet ready for general use. They are private in the
	sense that they are to be used only by the developer who
	is working on them. When they are ready for prime time they
	will be moved to another catagory.

2. Private methods are private to the class. (I don't reall understand
	this, but I have read it somewhere.)

3. There is no such thing as a private method in Smalltalk; it is
	only a non-enforcable convention that some programmers have
	adopted.

So what is it to be? I don't really >care< what the definition of
private is, but I would like to >know< what the definition is.

Thank You,

John-Reed Maffeo   - Squeak Guru Wannabe
Mesa, AZ





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