On Sep 12, 5:47 pm, Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > TheFlyingDutchman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I am talking about how an author describes in English the "this" > > pointer/reference in their book on programming C++ or Java. > > > I don't think you will find them saying that under the covers "this" > > was passed to the method (if in fact it is). They just say that it > > refers to the current object inside that object's method. > > In other words, it's magic, and the behaviour has to be explained so > the reader knows where the undeclared 'this' comes from.
I would disagree that it _has_ to be explained where it came from. I think knowing that the compiler is providing it is sufficient. Any further knowledge of what the compiler is doing under the covers to provide it is unnecessary. Sun made no mention of where "this" comes from in that link I provided. > > How is that preferable to the magic of "instance is passed as the > first argument to a method"? I would mention that an instance is passed as the first parameter argument of a method if the methods were declared with the extra argument and called with the extra argument: a = MyClass() my_method(a,someParameter) Then it makes sense to me to talk about it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list