Mailing Lists: Apple Mailing Lists
Image of Mac OS face in stamp
 
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Objective C language [NEWBEE QUESTIONS]

On Jan 30, 2004, at 1:44 PM, John Randolph wrote:

warning: hidden name clashing ahead, many mysterious headaches in gdb ...

Some people add a underscore prefix for private methods:

_setVariable:

Let me give an official "don't do that!" from Apple DTS here. Preceding your method names with a single underscore gives you a very high risk of a conflict with a private AppKit API.

Yup, my point exactly! those "some people" took their lead from NeXT engineers. That is why I suggested a real long prefix like THIS_IS_MY_PRIVATE_METHOD_DO_NOT_USE_IT_. Choose your own prefix that won't conflict with something else. The fact that Apple (and others) don't publish their private API means you have to be careful not to conflict with it. In the "old days" there were plenty of private method names in the AppKit that didn't have an underscore prefix and debugging took days before a "... I didn't know that method name was in the run time ..." followed by a "&(*%##@" suffix.

:-)

Lance Bland
mailto:email@hidden
VVI
888-VVI-PLOT
http://www.vvi.com
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
References: 
 >Objective C language [NEWBEE QUESTIONS] (From: "Alexander F. Hartner" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Objective C language [NEWBEE QUESTIONS] (From: Philip Mötteli <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Objective C language [NEWBEE QUESTIONS] (From: lbland <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Objective C language [NEWBEE QUESTIONS] (From: John Randolph <email@hidden>)



Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations.
1-800-MY-APPLE

Contact Apple | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.