I don't quite understand some syntax seen in books
Bijan Parsia
bparsia at email.unc.edu
Sun May 13 18:22:46 UTC 2001
--On Sunday, May 13, 2001 10:50 AM -0700 Ned Konz <ned at bike-nomad.com>
wrote:
> On Sunday 13 May 2001 10:13, Thomas Porter wrote:
>
>> What the heck is the '>>' between 'Controller' and 'controlActivity'?
>>
>> Is this simply an indication that controlActivity is a method in class
>> Controller?
>
> yes
And, importantly, it's just a documentation trick. I.e., it's not part of
any file-out format I know (though it's really easy to add it so that
copying and pasting from books works).
(Er...assuming you're using e-books ;))
>> If so, what kind of method, class or instance?
>
> Instance. If it were class, it would be
> Controller class >> whatever
I've observed the following convention (to summarize):
SomeClass>>someSelectorName
SomeClass>>/
SomeClass>>someSelectorName:withKeywords:
for "the method of SomeClass keyed by the symbol following the '>>'"
SomeClass class>>someSelectorName
does the same for the class method, and
#someSelectorName
to refer to the method in a context where the class was already
established. So:
"SomeClass>>someSelectorName is really a fine method. I use it all the
time. So much so, that I wanted to add a method like #someSelectorName to
SomeOtherClass. Here's the code for SomeOtherClass>>someSelectorName."
I suspect that the psuedo-symbol syntax can be a touch confusing, but it's
really handy, especially when talking about class methods :)
Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.
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