Download The SELF 4.1 Programmer`s Reference Manual

Introduction
Table of Contents
Table of Contents 1
Introduction 1
1.1
Overview of the SELF System .................................................................................................1
1.1.1
1.1.2
The system...........................................................................................................................1
The translation process ........................................................................................................2
Language Reference 3
2.1
Objects .............................................................................................................................................3
2.1.1
2.1.2
2.1.3
2.1.4
2.1.9
2.2
Slot descriptors..............................................................................................................................7
2.2.1
2.2.2
2.2.3
2.2.4
2.2.5
2.3
Read-only slots ....................................................................................................................8
Read/write slots ...................................................................................................................8
Slots containing methods.....................................................................................................9
Parent slots.........................................................................................................................11
Annotations........................................................................................................................11
Expressions ..................................................................................................................................11
2.3.1
2.3.2
2.3.3
2.3.4
2.3.5
2.3.6
2.3.7
2.3.8
2.3.9
2.3.10
2.4
Syntax ..................................................................................................................................3
Data objects .........................................................................................................................4
The assignment primitive ....................................................................................................4
Objects with code ................................................................................................................5
Construction of object literals .............................................................................................7
Unary messages .................................................................................................................12
Binary messages ................................................................................................................13
Keyword messages ............................................................................................................13
Implicit-receiver messages ................................................................................................14
Resending messages ..........................................................................................................15
Message lookup semantics ................................................................................................15
Message send.....................................................................................................................16
The lookup algorithm ........................................................................................................17
Undirected Resend.............................................................................................................17
Directed Resend.................................................................................................................18
Lexical elements .........................................................................................................................18
2.4.1
2.4.2
2.4.3
2.4.4
2.4.5
2.4.6
2.4.7
2.4.8
Character set ......................................................................................................................18
Identifiers ...........................................................................................................................19
Keywords...........................................................................................................................19
Arguments .........................................................................................................................19
Operators ...........................................................................................................................20
Numbers ............................................................................................................................20
Strings................................................................................................................................21
Comments..........................................................................................................................22