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_______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
