Objective C

Stahp objectifyin' meh!

I found this cool feature in Objective C where you can define two different categories that extend the same base class and both implement a method with the same name but with different return types. Which method gets called? What is the type of the return value? Only the ghost of Steve Jobs knows.

>>3
You mean it has polymorphism and runtime type info? Big fucking deal.

>>3
Is the called function based on how the returned value is being used?

So you could do
int i = func()
and
start s = func()

And the compiler would know which func to use?

>>5
∧ junction, what's your function?

>>4

If, for example, in Java I do this:


public interface foo {
  public int g();
}

I shouldn't be able to then do this:


public class bar implements foo {
  public String g() {
    return "a string";
  }
}

Because that's retarded. But categories in Objective C aren't polymorphism.

Categories work like this instead:


class A {
}

class A_Extension1 category of A {
  // all instances of A now have this method
  public int foo() {
    return 4;
  }
}

class A_Extension2 category of A {
  // we already declared this, but Objective C lets that slide
  public String foo() {
    return "a string";
  }
}

A a = new A();
a.foo(); // which method gets called?

I gave examples in "Java" instead of Objective C as it emphasizes how retarded it is.

objective c a shit