Reserved words – Apple WebObjects 3.5 User Manual
Page 178

Chapter 10
The WebScript Language
178
The postincrement and postdecrement operators are not supported. They
behave like the preincrement and predecrement operators. For example:
// WATCH OUT!! Probably not what you want.
i = 0;
while (i++ < 1) {
//this loop never gets executed because i++ is a preincrement.
}
Reserved Words
WebScript includes the following reserved words:
if
else
for
while
id
break
continue
self
super
nil
YES
NO
Three reserved words are special kinds of references to objects:
self
,
super
, and
nil
.
You can use these reserved words in any method.
self
refers to the object (the WOApplication object, the WOSession object, or the
WOComponent object) associated with a script. When you send a message to
self
, you’re telling the object associated with the script to perform a method that’s
implemented in the script. For example, suppose you have a script that
implements the method
giveMeARaise
. From another method in the same script,
you could invoke
giveMeARaise
as follows:
[self giveMeARaise];
This tells the WOApplication, WOSession, or WOComponent object associated
with the script to perform its
giveMeARaise
method.
When you send a message to
self
, the method doesn’t have to be physically
located in the script file. Remember that part of the advantage of object-
oriented programming is that a subclass automatically implements all of its
superclass’s methods. For example, WOComponent defines a method named
application
, which retrieves the WOApplication associated with this component.
Thus, you can send this message in any of your components to retrieve the
application object: