Python Macros

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Josiah Carlson wrote:
>>Not sure I understand you here.  I want to implement messages like in 
>>ObjC where if you send a msg to an object and that object does know what 
>>to do with it, it can send the obj automatically to another object which 
>>might know what to do with it.
>>
>>Anyhow, there are other reasons as well.
> 
> 
> What are called "messages" in ObjC, are generally known as "instance
> methods" in Python.
> 
> I would imagine in ObjC you would do something like the following:
> 
> object.send('operation', arg1, arg2, arg3,...)
> send(object, 'operation', arg1, arg2, arg3,...)
> 
> In Python, that becomes:
> 
> object.operation(arg1, arg2, arg3,...)
> 
> 
> "Messages" in ObjC are really just a metaphor, one that is shared by
> Smalltalk, but not many other object-oriented languages.
> 

Well, I'd rather say that *all* OOPLs support message passing. What we 
call 'methods' are just a way to implement a specific response to a message.

Given the following code :

    "a b c d".split()

What we're really doing - from an OO POV - is not calling the split() 
instance method of class str, but sending the 'split' message to a str 
object. The fact that doing so result in calling the split() instance 
method of the str class is just a side effect !-)

just-playing-with-words-ly y'rs
Bruno