On 12 Mar 2013, at 18:50, Jens Alfke wrote:
On Mar 12, 2013, at 9:44 AM, John McCall <rjmcc...@apple.com> wrote:
However, that wouldn't be an idiomatic implementation. The usual
expectation is that allocating methods, like +new methods,
construct an object *of type self* (at least).
Are you just quibbling about the prefix “new-“? The specific method
+new is expected to create a new instance of the receiving class,
yes. There may be a convention (I can’t remember?) that class
methods prefixed “new-” are intended to do the same.
I'm not sure if its a convention, but it does make sense, for
instance, I've been code like this before.
-(NSDictionary) newDictForSomethingWithInfo:(Info*) theInfo
{
// returns an dictionary allocated and initialized
}
somewhere else in the same class:
myDict = [self newDictForSomethingWithInfo:myInfo];
Which keeps the compiler/analyzer happy in non-ARC and works ok with
ARC enabled. If this isn't a convention then it should be IMO unless
there is another prefix used? allocDict would work, but this is as
bad or as good as new in this respect.
However, it’s hardly unusual to have a class method that
instantiates and returns some other kind of object. Dave’s use case
of a dictionary that describes metadata about the class seems
reasonable.
This is why I was talking about instance methods and fields:
because, generally, people introduce new classes because they
expect to create instances of them, and [[self superclass]
newDict] bypasses that in a way that might not be obvious.
I don’t see the problem here. Presumably the class is going to be
instantiated at some point,
This is the language I used, and is another source of confusion on
this. Apparently the language technically should be:
"Presumably the class is going to be to be used to instantiate an
Object at some point" which keeps everyone happy? lol
but the code Dave is working with is operating on metadata about
the class, so only class methods are involved in it.
Exactly!
All the Best
Dave
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