From: Phrogz <gavin@...>
Date: 2007-03-17T23:35:10+09:00
Subject: Re: A couple of questions from a Ruby neophyte

On Mar 10, 6:12 am, r...@dot.com (Lawrence Oluyede) wrote:
> > Python
> > ------
> > arr.append(value)      # OO, parenthesis NOT optional
> > len(arr)               # non-OO, albeit it can be overridden
>
> There's a bit of misunderstading of what's called OOP in regard of
> "message(object)" or "object.message" but I don't want to start a
> religious war here. Suffice to say that arr or an object who wants to
> mimic that behavior must implement a __len__ method so I don't really
> understand why that's not OOP. Smalltalk does use a similar syntax and I
> will not be the one stating that ST is not OO ;-)

I don't know Python, so answer me this: With that required __len__
method, can you write arr.__len__() to find out the length? Does the
built-in array class have any more conveniently-named method you can
call to find the length of the array?

If the answer to those is "no", then it's no OO because you have a
global function that works on a specific object (or set of objects)
and cannot thus be used with other objects. Requiring the use of a
single global namespace to call functions is not OO, by my definition.