"outer" keyword - get a reference to the outer class (parent, super, root, inner)

[nnnik]

I see - this is the first time I have seen base.method() being used. I just always misunderstood this part of the documentation.

[iseahound]

You can use this.base for that.

Actually using this.base gives me undesirable behavior...

Code: Select all

class a {
    save(){
        this.base.var := 7
    }
}

a.save()
MsgBox % a.var ; blank

class b extends Empty {
    save(){
        this.base.var := 7
    }
}

class Empty {
    ; Nothing to see here.
}

b.save()
MsgBox % b.var ; 7


; Expected, but undesirable behavior. 
MsgBox % empty.var

where if I have class a, and I want to hide a variable under its super global scope, it doesn't work unless a base class exists and extends creates that base class. Also for obvious reasons, I would not like to modify class Empty.

[lexikos]

Just use 'this' in that case...

[iseahound]

Small update to the first post to address cases where the "outer" property is nested in one class. The user can now call this.outer["subclass"] to retrieve the global class named "subclass". This is useful when the class may or may not be nested inside another class.

Code: Select all

outer[p:=""] {
   get {
      ; Determine if there is a parent class. this.__class will retrive the
      ; current instance's class name. Split the class string at each period, 
      ; using array notation [] to dereference. Void if not nested in at least 2 classes.
      if ((_class := RegExReplace(this.__class, "^(.*)\..*$", "$1")) != this.__class)
         Loop, Parse, _class, .
            outer := (A_Index=1) ? %A_LoopField% : outer[A_LoopField]
      ; Test if this property is nested in one class. If so, return the global class "p".
      ; Otherwise if no subclass (p) is specified, return an empty string.
      if IsObject(outer)
         return (p) ? outer[p] : outer
      else
         return (p) ? %p% : ""
   }
}