CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2012/ch1 1w22 an

Introduction

When we define a method in a class and decide to call that method, how do we do it?

We simply create an object of the class and pass the method name to the object as a message. The object then looks up into its method lookup path and tries to match the called method (passed as a message to the object) with the defined methods in the class. When there is a match, the method is executed along with the parameters passed and the result is returned.

What is a Method Lookup Path?

When the object receives a method name that is to be executed, these are the steps carried out for finding out that method called:

• It looks in the current self object’s own instance methods.
• Then it looks in the list of instance methods that all objects of that class share.
• Then in each of the included modules of that class, in reverse order of inclusion.
• Then it looks in that class’s superclass.
• Then in the superclass’s included modules, all the way up until it reaches the class Object.
• If it still can’t find a method, the very last place it looks is in the Kernel module, included in the class Object.
• Finally, it calls method_missing (if defined in the class), else throws up the NOMethodError exception.

This entire tracing that the object does is the method lookup path.