Re: OOP in Mathematica -- please help a newbie
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg20423] Re: OOP in Mathematica -- please help a newbie
- From: Jens-Peer Kuska <kuska at informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:33:07 -0400
- Organization: Universitaet Leipzig
- References: <7u8vv4$qe8@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi, Mathematica is a functional logic programming language and not a object oriented. You can't ask how to make LISP or Prolog object oriented. It is still possible to make some object oriented definitions but it is not the "natural" way. When every thing is an expression it is useless to introduce objects because the most general construct is already build in. The Mathematica Programmer II has some pages how to fake object oriented programming with Mathematica. It was original a part of his lectures on Computer Science. Hope that helps Jens Joe Strout wrote: > > I'm trying to discover if and how Mathematica supports object-oriented > programming. I just got v4.0, and a search in the master index points > me to the Mathematica Book, section 2.4.10. But clicking the link > jumps me to the bottom of that page, and scrolling up to that actual > section, I find it's called "Associating Definitions with Different > Symbols" and there is no mention of object-oriented programming. > > Is there a bug in the master index, or do I need to read between the > lines, or what? > > I also downloaded "Classes.m" from MathSource, a package from 1993 > which claims to add OOP capability to Mathematica. I opened this in > Mathematica and did "Evaluate Notebook"; it generated a number of > warnings (which now, for some reason, seem to be gone -- but they > appeared to be mostly similar-name warningns). Is this what I should > be using, or is this now obsolete? (The warnings, and the fact that > it's from 1993, make me suspicious.) > > Thanks for any pointers! > -- Joe