[Cuis-dev] clever or silly idea?

[Mark Volkmann]

A thought occurred to me that I could override the instance method
`doesNotUnderstand` in a class to avoid writing a bunch of basic accessor
methods. Setting aside whether it's ever a good idea to have a getter and
setter method for every instance variable in a class, I thought I could do
it like this:

doesNotUnderstand: aMessage
    "gets or sets an instance variable"

    | argCount getters key setters value |

    argCount := aMessage numArgs.
    argCount > 1 ifTrue: [ ^super doesNotUnderstand: aMessage ].

    key := aMessage keywords first.
    getters := self class allInstVarNames.
    setters := getters collect: [ :name | name, ':' ].
    (getters, setters includes: key) ifFalse: [ ^super doesNotUnderstand:
aMessage ].

    argCount = 0 ifTrue: [ ^self perform: key ].

    value := aMessage arguments first.
    self perform: key with: value

But this goes into an infinite loop because sending the `perform:` message
ends up hitting `doesNotUnderstand` again. Is there a way I could make this
work?

-- 
R. Mark Volkmann
Object Computing, Inc.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cuis.st/mailman/archives/cuis-dev/attachments/20240611/71a442a8/attachment-0001.htm>