As Esteban pointed out there are some dialects with proper support for that. But the semantics is the same as in Pharo, you can still send these messages.
It is more a warning to the programmer, and the browser shows you these methods with a particular icon or has tabs so you can easily filter out the methods marked as private. A least in VA is done by attaching some metadata to the methods and not changing its source code. On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 10:32 AM Esteban Maringolo <emaring...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Noury, > > In Dolphin Smalltalk and in IBM/VA Smalltalk, methods can be private, > it's a special attribute of the CompiledMethod, so the visibility > doesn't depend on a category name convention, and you can have both > public and private methods sharing a single category. I used that > attribute extensively in the previously described dialects, and it led > to good method categorization, in the case of Dolphin, it had the nice > thing of adding "Private - ..." to the method comment when you toggle > a method as private. > > I'm fine with the current state of everything being public, but if we > were to have that public/private distinction that would be the > simplest solution, having a <private> pragma could also work, but I > think that in terms of performance it could impact the lookup. I don't > know, however, if that is what the original request was after. > > Best regards, > > Esteban A. Maringolo > > On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 9:47 AM Noury Bouraqadi <bouraq...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > Hi Esteban, > > > > Which first "class attribute" are you referring to? Is it a pragma? Can > you provide an example please ? > > > > Thanx > > Noury > > > > On Aug 17 2021, at 10:31 pm, Esteban Maringolo <emaring...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > I don't understand the request? > > > > Wouldn't tagging methods as private (as a first class attribute, and > > not only its category) be enough? > > > > What you ask for seems to be a splitted method dictionary of some sort. > > > > Having first class private methods would save you from autocomplete > > selector "pollution" of private methods. > > > > Regards! > > > > Esteban A. Maringolo > > > > On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 5:14 PM Craig Johnson <cr...@hivemind.net> > wrote: > > > > > > Hi All, > > > > > > > > > Just a newb off-the-wall question. > > > > > > Is there any good reason why we can't create a true private method in a > > > Pharo class by putting that method inside an instance or class variable > > > as a lambda (block). > > > > > > > > > This would reduce one of my biggest bugbears with Pharo, namely the > > > pollution of the global namespace with every single message name in the > > > entire system. > > > > > > > > > > > > Craig >
