Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Tdarcos wrote:Oracle can say anything they want. Does not mean they're correct. As Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, "If we take a horse and call its tail a leg, it does not mean the horse has 5 legs. Calling a tail a leg does not make it one."
Extending object means it's an object. Which I know you know. But that's where it's headed.
Again, they can call it an object or claim it's descended from one, but that does not make it so. The guy who designed
Brainfuck can call it a programming language or claim it is one, but it's so ridiculously convoluted (hence the name) that no serious person would do so. (In fact, the Wikipedia article I pointed to above says it's "not suitable for practical use.")
Oh, speaking of Wikipedia, let's look at the first two sentences of the article on objects in computer programming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_%28 ... science%29
Wikipedia wrote:In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure. (With the later introduction of object-oriented programming the same word, "object", refers to a particular instance of a class)[.] In the domain of object-oriented programming an object is usually taken to mean an ephemeral compilation of attributes (object elements) and behaviors (methods or subroutines) encapsulating an entity
How can a quoted string be manipulated? As far as I know, a quoted string is immutable. You can modify a variable containing a string, but a string constant itself cannot be modified because there is no capability to do so. Where are the attributes? What behaviors does it have?
Later it says
Three properties characterize objects:
Identity: the property of an object that distinguishes it from other objects
State: describes the data stored in the object
Behavior: describes the methods in the object's interface by which the object can be used
Where is the "idenity", "state" or "behavior" of a string constant that makes it an object? It has none of these.
I understand what they are doing, having read this. They are treating strings as a
class, in which case then you can use methods of it, such as when you declare a string with the name "astring", then instead of using len(astring), left(astring,5), right(astring,6), mid(astring,10,5) you use methods of the string class such as astring.len, astring.left(5), astring.right(6), astring.mid(10,5), in which case you use methods of a string class to work on it instead of calling explicit functions that operate on strings. Okay, I'll buy that for variables which are strings or potentially for constants which are assigned a string value. It's just changing the syntax for manipulating string variables.
This you could do for a variable or constant which is instantiated to a string object.
But this is not the same as an item which is an unnamed manifest constant. It can't be accessed, cannot be modified and cannot have any actions performed on it. Now, if the compiler wants to
change this manifest constant internally into a private named object/class that is a string constant, so that it can just treat it the same as any other object in order to manipulate it as such, that's an entirely different matter where the compiler redefines something as something else. Or where it changes something to make it easier on itself or for its own convenience.
On the IBM 360/370 mainframe, if you used a constant in an instruction, such as
Code: Select all
L 12,=F'5'
MVC XRAY,="YES"
...
MVC ZULU,="YES"
It does not insert this where it is declared. The assembler creates these constants at the bottom of the program, creates an address for them, goes back and inserts the address, then when multiple references to a constant occur, it uses the same address for all of them.
Here, the compiler does this for its own convenience.
So I stand by my comments, a manifest constant can be
called an object but just because someone is
calling a manifest constant an object does not make it one.