[186] in Coldmud discussion meeting

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re: confusion

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thu Mar 31 07:10:04 1994 )

Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 15:39:15 -0800
From: rayn@wookie.crossaccess.com (Ray Nawara jr.)
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU

It seems that things have kinda gotten confused as to what im asking.
basically, the context I'm looking at is that of writing methods on
objects. When looking at some stuff in a copy of a later ColdDark core
I noticed that there didnt seem to be methods to set variables on 
objects, just methods to retrive them. This may be because of the
copy I had, or because i was looking in the wrong place. My
suggestion of a combined set/retrive method was also sortof tentative
which helped confuse matters.
So the two main issues im intersted in at this point:
	How do the current cores deal with general setting of variables
(and by this i dont mean other objects setting a var, just the object
that owns the var setting it for internal use).
	Would it be bad to have one method that either set the var or
returned the var, based upon the context it was called in? This may
be a bit confusing to the programmer, so I could see why it wouldnt
be desireable, it just seemed like a neat idea at the time :)
As a corellary to point 2 should the core methods that add a parameter
also add the set and retrieve methods for the parameter (pehaps based on
a template?) This would of course be modifiable, but would then be 
useful in preventing typing in the accessor each time. alternately
a template accessor could be called or inherited, although im unclear
on how to inherit a uniqely named method. 
Sorry about continuously restating my point, but i keep getting responses
to the parts I mostly already know (i.e. other objects should directly 
set vars on an object). my point is that there should be only one method
period that sets a var on an object, and that object should use that 
method...
Ash