From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-07-04T01:21:14+09:00
Subject: Re: About 1.9 #__method__ feature.

Hi --

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> On Jul 3, 2006, at 10:59 AM, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
>
>> I haven't noticed invoke_functional_method.  I admit I'm still unclear
>> on the (new?) use of the notion of 'function' in addition to
>> 'method'....  How do you characterize a functional method, in this
>> context?
>
> Well, a private method is not suppose to be invoked externally, so it's not 
> really a "method call."  That's my best guess at the reasoning...

I can see that point, but I'm not sure how it leads to the concept of
a functional method.  It seems like all of these permutations could be
built on the basic message-sending paradigm, where the act of the
caller (sending a message) is separate from the act of the object
(deciding what to do in response to the message).

To me, "funcall" and anything referring directly to method-invocation
do a short-circuiting of that paradigm.

By contrast, consider:

   obj.method(:m).call

In this case, the caller has to go through a separate step -- which I
think is good.  I wouldn't want to see that turned into:

   obj.method_call(:m)


David

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