Hi --

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, ara.t.howard / noaa.gov wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Trans wrote:
>
>>>> 
>>>> Do you understand that #send is tantamount to a keyword?
>>> 
>>> yes.  but it's only keword-like without a receive and
>>>
>>>    send! 'private_method'
>>> 
>>> is fine since
>>>
>>>    private_method
>>> 
>>> is fine too.
>> 
>> But it's the public use that actually causes the most trouble. It's
>> keyword-like in that it a method that is too important to override. So
>> we end up with __send__ or __send, which is ridiculous. Might as well
>> drop #send altogether and just have the ugly shadow method. Please, ask
>> yourselves, why do we have __send__?
>> 
>> T.
>
> hmmm.  there is no way around this kind of thing unless the operation of
> sending a message to an object is removed from the object's interface.  so we
> could have something like
>
>  Pervasives.send obj, message, *args, &block
>
> here Pervasives is an object that cannot be changed - even by changing
> Object#send.
>
> this also allows
>
>  Pervasives.object_id obj
>
> etc.
>
> thoughts?

I'm afraid I'm lost.  What's wrong with send, other than its
commonness as a name (which is dealt with by __send__)?  If it's too
much trouble to explain, that's OK.


David

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