Re: Question about Style wrt "private" methods
Re: Question about Style wrt "private" methods
- Subject: Re: Question about Style wrt "private" methods
- From: Jens Alfke <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:49:27 -0800
On Nov 18, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Michael de Haan wrote:
> "Names of most private methods in the Cocoa frameworks have an underscore prefix (for example, _fooData ) to mark them as private. From this fact follow two recommendations.
>
> • Don’t use the underscore character as a prefix for your private methods. Apple reserves this convention."
This is unfortunately true. The danger is that if you add an _-prefixed method to your class, it might conflict with a private method declared in a superclass. If this happens your method will override the internal one, and Really Bad Things will probably happen. It's a rare problem but it has happened before. (And even if everything works well now, any future OS update might add a new private method in a superclass that breaks your code. Again, this has actually happened.)
Using a naming convention for your private/internal methods is a good idea; just use a different convention. I've seen people use an "i_" prefix, for example.
—Jens_______________________________________________
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