Stuart Herring wrote:
The ">>" is just a way of indicating that you're talking about a message name.
In your example, MyClass is the class name, and doThis is the message name. You'll never actually enter the ">>" when defining a message, instead you'd put the code in the doThis message of MyClass in the browser.
Regards, Stuart.
Thanks, Stuart for your reply. I should understand by now. There must be something very simple I am missing, because the ">>" symbol is used almost in passing in the early chapters of many tutorials.
In the example:
MyClass>>doThis array := Array new: 3. array at: 1 put: 2.
you say that MyClass is the class name, and doThis is the message name. I follow so far, even though with the object/message syntax of Smalltalk I would expect the arrows to point the other direction. I have learned that we don't use classes directly, we use instances of classes. So we couldn't use the first line of the above example without doing first:
foo := MyClass
so that we could pass whatever message doThis might be. Right? Is doThis predefined, or is it somehow being defined in this example?
Further, I am confused that the ">>" is not a symbol that is input to the machine, but rather a symbol that is output to indicate some relationship or function (you say message name indicator), yet MyClass>>doThis is clearly not merely a comment.
Last, I do not understand how the MyClass>>doThis of the above example relates in any way to the second and third lines.