Re: PATCH: Find more ObjC methods

[Devang Patel <dpatel at apple dot com>]

On Oct 3, 2003, at 12:14 PM, Ziemowit Laski wrote:

> On Friday, Oct 3, 2003, at 12:00 US/Pacific, Devang Patel wrote:
>
> > On Oct 3, 2003, at 2:57 AM, David Ayers wrote:
> >
> > >  [self somePrivatMethod]; /* <- should not see the prototype and 
> > > warn! */
> >
> > Does this mean that using private methods, that are not included
> > in @interface, is not a good idea? I think, compiler should figure
> > out that it is part @implementation and not warn about it.
>
> Well, Objective-C plays it fast and loose here (as in many other 
> places). :-)  On the one hand,
> you're definitely encouraged to provide an @interface for your class 
> in a header that other
> translation units can pull in.  But on the other, you do not _need_ to 
> provide an @interface at
> all!  It may not be very polite, but if the @implementation contains 
> the required ivars,
> the compiler knows what to do.

Yes, I understand this well.

> Furthermore, methods in Objective-C are not 'private' (or 'protected') 
> in the C++ sense;
> all methods _are_ visible to the runtime.  So, in the example above, 
> the program definitely
> _will_ call 'somePrivateMethod'.  Also, since we happened to see the 
> @implementation in this
> case, we can actually determine which 'somePrivateMethod' this will be.

That's why compiler should not issue warning in this case. If it issues 
warning
than as an end user I take it it as "I'm doing something that is not 
OK/preferred
and compiler is warning me about it". Which not the case here so 
compiler should
not issue warning (and I guess you agree with me).

--
Devang