On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Luther Baker <lutherba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A _better_ analogy to an Objective-C @protocol would be a formal Java > interface. > Sure. And the same in C# (which the OP was asking about). > So, Kyle may have good reasons for his answer - but if I understand the > essence of your question, I would say yes, a pure "abstract class" (where > no methods are implemented) or a formal "interface" (where method > signatures have no implementation) in a language like Java ... would both > indeed be _similar_ to a formal @protocol in Objective-C. > The significant difference, though, between an abstract class in Java or C#, and a protocol in Objective-C, is that the former may have substantial implementation associated with it for the benefit of subclasses, and just not be directly instantiable. (Something like UIKit's UIResponder might be a good choice for this kind of thing, if Objective-C supported it: it provides a lot of common machinery you wouldn't want each conforming class to implement separately, but also isn't something you'd use on its own.) Another way that Objective-C accomplishes some of the same goals is through delegation. You don't, for instance, subclass a UITableView to provide its data, you provide a delegate that conforms to UITableViewDataSource; which protocol does have a couple of required methods. Sixten _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
