On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 04:42:27PM -0700, Michael Lazzaro wrote: > [Draft Proposal: Symmetry between Attributes and Accessors] > > It is proposed that class attributes may be treated as functionally > equivalent to an identically named accessor method. In this manner, it > shall become irrelevant to callers whether a public attribute of an > object is implemented as an attribute, or an lvalue method.
Excellent. When Chip was starting Topaz a lot of implementation languages were suggested. Eiffel seemed to have a lot going for it, and this was one of its features that I really liked. The argument, of course, is that the implementation is, well, just an implementation detail and that exposing it to the class user breaks encapsulation. > [CONS] > > - Making publicly accessible attributes at all is considered Bad Form > in most OO methodologies, which advocate the use of explicit accessor > methods. We may wish to discourage or even prohibit the behavior. If, as a class user, you can't (easily) tell the difference between a method call and an attribute, I don't see any problem. > - An attribute and a method are _not_ typically implemented in the same > manner. Treating the two as interchangeable might imply runtime > overhead. Bah! I bet the internals list will laugh at you :-) -- Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pjcj.net
