On Jun 20, 7:33 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rob Dixon) wrote: > Well, sort of. Objects are simply intelligent data structures - structures > with > code as well as data that know how to perform operations on themselves.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but early on when I was learning OOP, I often read descriptions of objects that were similar to this one, i.e., that objects "contained" code and could "perform operations on themselves". To my mind, this is a poor way to express things and, at least for me, can lead to confusion. After faltering with Java for a while, it was not until I learned how Perl handles OOP that the whole zoo of concepts finally sank into my (admittedly less than razor sharp) brain. In my opinion, a better and more accurate way to express it would be something like: Objects are data structures that are associated with code designed to perform operations on them. I have never seen an object perform an operation on itself. :-) I have seen many methods perform operations on objects. I have seen objects inform the system calling the method where that system may find the proper code for that object. So objects out in the wild are data structures that (usually) do not have code "in" them. They must be fed to a method of their class, which is where the code is. The objects DO have the information that tells, say, Perl, in which class it should start looking for the method. Regards, -- Brad -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/
