Subject: Re: Encapsulation

From: Erik Ostrom <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 13:12:09 -0800

> The current permissions systems are all about security, they do not have
> anything to do with flexibility.  And the flexibility we are looking for
> here is the extra level of abstraction provided by the verbs or "getters"
> as they are called in some other object oriented languages.

@prop foo.bar 0 ""

If a property has none of the r, w, and c bits set, is readable and
writable only by the owner of the object on which it is defined.  The
object should then define getters and setters for manipulation of the
property.

It would be better if this (the !c part, at least) were default.  It
would probably be better if it were mandatory and there were no
permissions bits.  It would be better if access were limited to the
object defining the property, rather than that object's owner.

You do, however, have significant flexibility.

>							      And I too
> believe that it could put a serious dent in the number of MOO server
> crashes.

I'm curious--what leads you to this belief?