On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:49 AM, brianp <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Thanks for the clarification everyone! > > I wouldn't have expected it to have different meaning depending on he > object/class type. I'll keep an eye out for that. > > On Aug 12, 9:40 am, Marnen Laibow-Koser <rails-mailing-l...@andreas- > s.net> wrote: > > Frederick Cheung wrote: > > > On Aug 12, 4:37 pm, Marnen Laibow-Koser <rails-mailing-l...@andreas- > > > s.net> wrote: > > >> are methods in Ruby. Not all methods are operators, but that's another > > >> syntactic issue. > > > > > If we're being pedantic, then not all operators are methods: ! is not > > > a method, nor is ?: and != is hardwired to be the negation of == > > > (there are a few others eg &&, :: et.) > > > > Ack, you're right. I keep forgetting that unlike Smalltalk or C++, not > > *every* operator is a method call. Sorry about the error. (However, << > > *is* both.) > > > > Best, > > -- > > Marnen Laibow-Koserhttp://www.marnen.org > > [email protected] > Yes, everything in Smalltalk is a method or commonly referred to as a message that's always sent to an object. However, in C++, everything can be thought of as a method but a method in C++ can have further semantic meanings because it was derived from C. For example, if I say write a method, one tends to think within a class using a message passing style if I say write a function, one tends to think of a C style representation using a non-message passing style sometimes Next, one cannot overload the C and C++ operators within C++: '.', '?:', 'sizeof', '::', and '.*'. Although, they are technically considered operators within the language. In short, I tend to think of operators as a specialized class of methods which have been derived from non-alphabetic characters and they have their particular usage constraints. Also, the use of the word, method, means semantically different things in different languages. -Conrad <[email protected]> > > -- > > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
