[Pdx-pm] interesting testing hole thats been dug

[Thomas J Keller]

Beginner's lament:
What the heck is "duck-typing"?

Tom K

On Jan 4, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Eric Wilhelm wrote:

> # from Michael G Schwern
> # on Thursday 04 January 2007 11:20 am:
>
>> Wil Cooley wrote:
>>>  It obviously doesn't make sense to
>>> require $obj->isa('Net::FTP'), because with duck-typing it doesn't
>>> actually have to be a subclass.  How thoroughly should I test with
>>> $obj->can() for the object's abilities?
>>
>> Your code already does all the checking it needs by calling  
>> methods on
>> $obj.  About all ->can is going to buy you is a nicer error message,
>> but then you have to keep a duplicate list of all the methods your
>> code calls on $obj.  Its up to how lax or strict you want to be.
>> Since you're allowing duck-typing you're probably lax.
>
> I agree that keeping a duplicate list of all of the methods isn't the
> way to go unless you can easily auto-generate it -- even then, it  
> might
> be more strict than is actually needed.
>
> I think there's usefullness in doing one check for 'get' or other
> similarly characteristic/indispensible method, just as a general early
> run-time sanity check (to be reasonably sure it's not a Shovel.pm
> object.)  Let the rest fail later with the 'Can't locate object method
> "foo"...' stock error.  This will make development easier, since the
> duck only needs to support what gets called on it in any given
> prototype/hack.
>
> The exception would be when you're dealing with a set of classes that
> have agreed on some standard or convention (ala the USB spec's "what
> sort of device are you?" scheme -- but even olympus managed to botch
> that by only testing their "I'm a mass sortage device" camera against
> windows where the spec-mandated question never got asked.)
>
> --Eric
> -- 
> Peer's Law: The solution to the problem changes the problem.
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