On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Ben Trumbull <[email protected]> wrote: >> I sure hope not! The documentation for the method states: >> >> "The init method defined in the NSObject class does no initialization; >> it simply returns self." >> >> Making it do anything else would be a serious breach of the API contract. > > That is a matter of perspective. And why lawyers plague the world. "no > initialization" is not the same as "absolutely not a single CPU > instruction". For example, this tech writer might have meant "no > initialization of this object", which would be obvious, not realizing that > someone else would read that and wrongly infer that they could safely skip > using it correctly as demonstrated in the code box right next to the words.
Perspective, nuts! Given the context, it's about as clear as you could possibly get that this method does nothing but return self. The use of the word "simply", the "no initialization" when describing an init method, the utter pointlessness of the sentence if other work were being done, it all leads to a single conclusion. Quite frankly, any tech writer who wrote the above sentence with the intent of allowing for other activities to take place would be so bad at his job that he should be fired and replaced by someone competent. The rest of the discussion is about how to deal with -init in the general case, not NSObject's specific implementation thereof, so it does not apply. I maintain that NSObject -init is guaranteed to do nothing, and changing this fact would seriously break the API contract. Mike _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list ([email protected]) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [email protected]
