On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 12:29:33PM +1000, Damian Conway wrote:
> > if so, then wouldn't it be safer to put properties inside a special object
> > associated with each object (the 'traits' object) so there would be little
> > namespace collision?
>
> We actually want the possibility of that kind of namespace collision:
> for polymorphism.
Many people keep bringig this up as a confusion and you give the same reply.
However there has not yet, AFAIK, been any description of how having a method
overload a property is useful.
If there is some compelling reason that this is a must, then fine. But many
people seem to be finding this a point of confusion.
Personally I don't see that the gain is greater than the confusion. I would
rather see properties be accessed via a different operator other than dot (.)
If a class wants to manipulate a property via a method they still can, the user
just has to call the method instead of accessing the property directly
With the current approach I can see most code accessing properties with $var.prop{name}
because they want to make sure they get the property and not a method, whereas
it would be shorter, in the common case, to have something like $var'name
Graham.
