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Primitive Methods
Last updated at 12:16 pm UTC on 26 June 2005
A primitive method is a
Method
that invokes behavior in the
Virtual Machine
or a plugin. Primitive methods provide functionality that is not available from normal Smalltalk methods.
For example, there are primitive methods for I/O For example:
file access (See
FileStream
)
network sockets (see
Socket
)
mouse and keyboard events (see
Sensor
)
Additionally, there are methods to implement parts of Smalltalk semantics. For example:
#basicNew creates new objects
#class returns the class of an object
#at: and #at:put: access the indexed variables of an array-like object
To implement your own primitive method, see
Named Primitives
.
FFI
defines its own kind of primitive methods and thus provides similar functionality.