Methods

From Reia

Arrow methods

Reia supports an asynchronous approach to method dispatch in the form of "arrow methods". You may be familiar with invoking methods on objects using the object->method syntax. The arrow generally implies at least one of the following: the call is being made to something remote, and the call is being made in the form of a message. Reia flips the arrow around, to make it clear you're sending a message to the object. When invoking an arrow method in Reia, it takes the form object<-method.

Arrow methods send messages to objects. However, unlike methods in other object oriented languages, arrow methods don't wait for a response. The message is enqueued for later processing by its receiver, and you're free to go about your business.

Example:

foo = Foo.new
foo<-bar("baz!")

In the class definition for the receiver, special syntax is used to designate that a given method is an arrow method:

class Foo
  def ->bar(arg)
    puts(arg)

The "->" token designates that a given method is an arrow method.