On 26/05/2010, at 11:10 PM, vincent habchi wrote: > So, tell me if I'm wrong, but I infer from your answer that whatever I can > do, there is no means for a subclass A' to access any private variable of its > ancestor.
Correct, if class A has not declared an accessor to it, and you haven't added one via a category (thanks Roland). > Well, as a regular Python code writer, I've never missed @private (or even > @protected) declarations. I fail anyhow to grasp the relevancy of @private > vis-à-vis @protected: It seems logical to me that subclasses be granted > access to all ancestor attributes. For yourself it might not be all that useful, after all you know how your own code works (well, sometimes ;-) and are not tempted to abuse it without thought. For code that you release to a wider audience, it is useful in that it eliminates an easy form of abuse that you likely didn't consider in your design. Anything you can do to encourage (or force) a user of your code NOT to take the wrong path is a useful tool to employ. Just decalring certain ivars @private sends the message to the next developer: "don't touch these". --Graham _______________________________________________ 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