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Re: multiple declarations for method `length' ?




On Dec 30, 2004, at 12:57 PM, Charlton Wilbur wrote:


If you check NSDictionary you'll find that:

- (id)objectForKey:(id)aKey

...it returns an "id" object. In other words, the compiler don't know what type of object it is. When you call the method "length" on that object, the compiler needs to guess what implementation to use. If there is only one such method it's easy, but if there are several it's not. You can help the compiler by casting [...]

I thought one of the huge advantages of message-passing over function calls was that you could send messages to "id" objects and objc_send would sort out the details.

Yes, which is why it works. But the compiler, which is issuing the warning, can't necessarily tell what value will receive the message at runtime, and so it's warning you that there are two possible methods that might be invoked depending on what class the object is. If you want to get rid of the warning, you can make your intent clear to the compiler by inserting a cast.


Charlton


More importantly in this case is that there are two different lengths - one in NSString (and NSData, etc...) which returns an unsigned int, and another in NSStatusItem that returns a float.


It's the fact that there are multiple routines that return different types that the warning happens - if not for the existence of NSStatusItem, there wouldn't be a warning at all, since things like NSString and NSData's length would all return their values in the same (integer) register. The float, however, is returned in a floating point register (and if the reciever were actually an NSStatusItem, the return value would be whatever random values are in that integer register).

Glenn Andreas                      email@hidden 
 <http://www.gandreas.com/> oh my!
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

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References: 
 >multiple declarations for method `length' ? (From: Mark Dawson <email@hidden>)
 >Re: multiple declarations for method `length' ? (From: j o a r <email@hidden>)
 >Re: multiple declarations for method `length' ? (From: John Stiles <email@hidden>)
 >Re: multiple declarations for method `length' ? (From: Charlton Wilbur <email@hidden>)



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