From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-09-13T09:57:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Should "new" methods do anything?

On Saturday, September 13, 2003, 6:03:51 AM, Philip wrote:

> A programming style question:

> Should "new" methods actually do anything, or should they only perform
> initialization?

> For example, let's say I have a class called "Httpd" which runs an
> HTTP server. Should its interface be like this:

>     server = Httpd.new(:listen_port => 80) # Initialize the server
>     server.run                             # Run it

> Or like this?

>     Httpd.new(:listen_port => 80) # Initialize and run the server

> The latter way is more streamlined, but feels bad for some reason that
> I can't quite put into words right now.

The method is "doing too much", a common problem.  You may want to
pass the server to another method which runs it, or not, based on some
other things.

Gavin