Simon Vandemoortele wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 at 18:07 GMT, Dave Thomas wrote:
> 
>>Is a Contact that you return as the result of a search(say) the same 
>>type of thing that you use to create or edit a new entry?
> 
> 
> Yes.

See below... :)

>>Your assumption is that they are (basically) the same thing, but perhaps 
>>you might want to rethink that. They don't seem to share the same 
>>methods. Maybe you need two classes: Contact and MutableContact. Regular 
>>Contact classes have methods that let them be examined but not altered. 
>>MutableContacts allow change.  If needed by your application, class 
>>Contact could include a #to_matuable method that returned a MutableContact.
> 
> 
> Hmmm. I never thought about that, mainly because it requires creating
> two types of contacts that will hold _exactly_ the same data. I will
> take it into consideration.

Remember: objects equal data + operations. Two objects have different 
types if they differ in either.

Also remember, their may be a subclassing or delegation interface 
between the mutable and immutable interfaces; there's nothing to say 
that you have to duplicate information.


Cheers

Dave