Re:Crafting Interpreters: Superclasses
by munificent on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:44PM
(#22619257)
Lox makes a distinction between functions and methods, so you won't run into this problem. This is unlike JavaScript, but like most other object-oriented languages.
If you take a function (which may be a reference to a method) and store it in a field on some instance, the function remembers its original bindings to "this" and "super", which is generally what you want and expect.
Lox doesn't allow you to mutate a class by adding new methods to it.
> Lox will also have this quirk, won't it?
Possibly - I’m not sure about the details of method lookup in Lox. Does `this` even work correctly when a method is assigned to an instance?
Re:Crafting Interpreters: Superclasses
by munificent on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:45PM
(#22619270)
If you store a function or reference to a method in a field on an instance in Lox, the function will remember its original `this` binding. That's what Python, C#, Ruby, etc. do and is generally what you want. It's not what JS does because JS doesn't really know what a "method" is, or at least didn't before classes were added.
Is it possible that there isn't a `this` binding? Does Lox allow access to "unbound" methods directly from a class, or are methods accessible only via instances?
Re:Crafting Interpreters: Superclasses
by munificent on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:07PM
(#22619536)
Methods are only accessible from instances, so `this` is always meaningfully bound. If you try to use `this` outside of a class body, it's a static error.
Or does it only come up when a method is added to the class?