Just to add confusion >:) - another possible approach might be to have a Semantic Checking base class that contains any common code between the way an Entry and a Dictionary checks for valid semantics. Maybe Entry will use this class directly, while Dictionary will use a specialized sub-class.

As Masem said, there is nothing wrong with different classes sharing the same method names. That's usually good design.

I recommend designing the three different Semantic classes, if you find any substantial amount of commonality, look into interitance. It seems to me that the Entry checker is the simple one, Dictionary checker does a bit more work, and then your last checker does even more work. This might be a good candidate for aggregation, where the Dictionary checker passes off some of it's responsibilty to the Entry checker, maybe. TIMTOWTDI, especially in OO design.

I heard Flyweight pattern mentioned in the chatter yesterday. Here is a brief explanation taken from Design Patterns (the GoF book):

A flyweight is a shared object that can be used in multiple contexts simultaneously... Flyweights model comcepts or entities that are normally too plentiful to represent with objects. For example, a document editor can create a flyweight for each letter of the alphabet. Each flyweight stores a character code, but its coordinate position in the document and its typographic style can be determined from the text layout algorithms and formatting commands...

In other words, the character code being stored in a given flyweight is called intrinsic state, it is information independent of the flyweights context - whereas the info about the character's position and font are passed to the flyweight object by the client when it need them. This information depends upon the flyweight's context - this is known as extrinsic state.

So, do you need to implement the Flyweight pattern on this problem? Probably not - the Flyweight would only be good if you had started with it, and had more than 3 objects in question. So at this point, i recommend going ahead with your original idea, and call each method from Entry, Dictionary, etc. the same - semcheck() works for me. ;)

Every problem is different, and as such, each implementation will have subtle differences. Does code A belong in object foo or bar. Try both and see which is the most flexible, and which is simplest.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)

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