Learning XOTcl

MC: As I go about Learning XOTcl, I decided to wikify some of my questions as I find answers to them to help others in the future. Feel free to add & expand on this page.

Q: What's the equivalent idiom for what snit would call type variables (or static member variables)?

A: On the XOTcl mailing list I received helpful answers from Neophytos Demetriou, Kristoffer Lawson, and Gustaf Neumann. Summarizing here:

 Class Chapters
 Chapters set current_chapter 12345

 # Then any object or class can use
 Chapters set current_chapter

 # while an instance could do:
 Chapters aChapter
 [aChapter info class] set current_chapter 4567
 puts [[aChapter info class] set current_chapter]

 # We can a printCurrentChapter method (an instproc on the Chapters class) as:
 Chapters instproc printCurrentChapter {} {
     puts [[my info class] set current_chapter]
 }

 # and we call the method
 aChapter printCurrentChapter

Another possibility is to bring the classes variable into the scope of a method on an object.

 Chapters instproc incrChapter {} {
     [self class] instvar current_chapter
     incr current_chapter
 }

 aChapter incrChapter

Gustaf in particular pointed out that XOTcl does not need a special construct, since every class is an object as well, and variables kept in a class are nothing special. Note that a programmer can decide which kind of class he is refering to:

• the class which is the type of the object (via my info class)
• the current class, which is currently active (via self class)

The type of variable you are refering to is the first one.

XOTcl in prototyping mode XOTcl for prototyping