Parts of an Icon object

For convenience, I put all the pieces of an object into a single source file whose name is the class name. For example, a Tree object would live in file tree.icn.

The parts of an Icon object are:

• The object itself is generally an Icon record type containing whatever fields are necessary to hold all an object's state. My convention is that an object of type foo is represented by a record of type footag.
  • The Icon language does not prevent the caller from accessing the object's fields directly, but the verification panel should flag any violations of encapsulation.
  • Occasionally I'll use a simple class like an integer or string to represent small objects, but as usual in the o-o world, the caller should not make any assumptions about the exact representation.
• The methods (procedures) of the object are divided into public and private methods. Again, Icon itself does not prohibit a client from calling a private method, but such calls are a violation of encapsulation.

Last updated: 1996/04/14 23:04:13
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/~shipman/soft/clean/ooparts.html