Re: Defining Java Classes in Kawa

[David O'Callaghan <David dot OCallaghan at cs dot tcd dot ie>]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 10:52:08AM -0700, Per Bothner wrote:
> David O'Callaghan wrote:
> 
> > As far as I can tell, it's not possible to define a non-default
> > constructor in Kawa, or to call the super-class constructor, based on
> > http://sources.redhat.com/ml/kawa/2003-q4/msg00085.html.
> 
> Calling super-methods is not a problem:  Kawa recently not the
> invoke-special format which can be used for that.
> 
> It might be nice to add a shorthard:
> 
> (invoke-super ARG ...) ===
>  (invoke-special <SUPERCLASS> (this) 'THIS-METHOD ARG ...)

Would invoke-special work even for constructors (assuming that it's
possible to define them)? Something like:

(invoke-special <SUPERCLASS> (this) '<init> ARG ...)

> Adding non-default constructors to define-simple-class is
> probably not that difficult.

That's good to hear.

> Design is an issue:  I don't
> really like the concept of special constructor methods with
> magic properties and names.  (There should be no public
> "constructors" - just factory methods.)  However, for
> define-simple-class it is important to be compatible with
> Java, which makes it hard to do constructors as anything
> other than magic methods with magic names.
> 
> But what should be the name of the constructor method?

I'd like "new", but I don't have strong feelings about this.

Thanks for the quick response,

David