Nevertheless, it's the use of the same calling style that is the root of the problem.

Perl 6 will have a compromise solution to this. The calling style for a private method is very like, but not quite the same as, the calling style for a public method. All private attributes and method names will start with a distinguishing character, which at the moment I would guess is colon, though at one time it was exclamation mark. Anyway, 

has $.foo;            # public attribute
has $:bar;            # private attribute
method foo (){...}    # public method
method :bar () {...}  # private method
...
$self.foo()           # always calls public method virtually
     .foo()           # unary variant
$self.:bar()          # always calls private method
     .:bar()          # unary variant
...
$self.bar()           # calls public bar, not private.

[download]
In this way, you don't have to change your argument passing--it's just a matter of inserting an extra character. The calls are also self-documenting, since you can tell by inspection whether you're looking for something public or private. Likewise, any use of $.foo is obviously public, while any use of $:foo is obviously private.

In reply to Re: Re^2: Private method variations by TimToady
in thread Private method variations by adrianh

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