On 5/9/07, Allison Randal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Klaas-Jan Stol wrote: > hi, > IIRC (currently no pc around to check, but I realized this issue when > reading on objects pdd), calling a method in PIR can be done as follows: > > $P0.'someMethod'() > > but also: > > .local string meth /* or maybe a pmc ?*/ > meth = 'someMethod' > $P0.meth() This is a long-standing IMCC issue and also affects subs. The PMC variant also works: .local pmc meth meth = # fetch the method object $P0.meth() > However, this looks like as if the object in $P0 has a method called > 'meth', > just as a class object has methods like 'inspect', and 'roles'. This is > imho > a bit unfortunate, it makes this syntax a bit ambiguous. > It gets tricky if you have some variable that goes by the same name, like > 'inspect', or 'roles'. An annoyance I've been caught by before.
sorry, didn't realize that.
So, I would suggest to disallow arbitrary objects holding methods for this > syntax; only allow for strings as method names, or barenames if they are > known to be methods on the PMC. That doesn't quite get around the problem, because you still have the ambiguity, "sometimes it's one thing and sometimes it's another". And if barenames are allowed for the methods that are defined, what if you write some code passing in a named variable containing a string method name, and then update the object to have a method of that same name? We could entirely disallow barenames, so it's always either a quoted string or a variable.
In other words, both PCCMETHODs as well as methods defined in PIR should be quoted? (so, calling methods by their name needs quoting the name, for instance: $P0."new"() for the new object instantiation method). I would like this, I think. (just for my understanding, a PCCMETHOD is just a ".sub :method", but defined in C, right? I keep forgetting; didn' implement a PCCMETHOD yet.) But even that doesn't solve the problem, because currently if the method
name is a string PMC: $P0 = new String $P0 = "hello" object.$P0()
It tries to treat the PMC as a method object and gives you the error
"invoke() not implemented in class 'String'".
Does this make sense? Then maybe we should fix this ($P0 should evaluate to its value, which is a string). We need more distinctions in the PIR syntactic sugar. On the drive home
from the last Portland Perl Mongers meeting I was kicking around something a little Perl 6-ish. object.method() # bareword methodname object~method() # string variable name (string or PMC) object!method() # invoke PMC method object
with all due respect, I think too much different notations is confusing. But those differences are really hard to see. So, this lingers on as an
unresolved question. Allison
kjs
