Geas Home | Play the Game

2.2.1.2 Making single object-external function calls

An external call is a call from one object to another. In order to do that you need an object reference to the object you want to call. We haven't discussed exactly how you acquire an object reference yet, but assume for the moment that it already is done for you.

mixed <object reference/object path>-><function>(<argument list>); mixed call_other(<ob ref/ob path>, "<function>", <arg list>); e.g. /* * Assume that I want to call the function 'compute_pie' in the * object "/d/Mydom/thewiz/math_ob", and that I also have the * proper object pointer to it stored in the variable 'math_ob' */ pie = math_ob->compute_pie(1.0); pie = "/d/Mydom/thewiz/math_ob"->compute_pie(1.0); pie = call_other(math_ob, "compute_pie", 1.0); pie = call_other("/d/Mydom/thewiz/math_ob", "compute_pie", 1.0);

If you make an external call using the object path, the so called master object will be called. If the object you call hasn't been loaded into memory yet, it will be. If an external call is made to a function that doesn't exist in the object you call, 0 will be returned without any error messages. Calls to objects that have bugs in the code will result in an error message and the execution of the object that made the call is aborted. The call will also fail if the calling object lacks the proper priviliges to load the target object.