Well, static methods (and static variables, which would be nice, too)are able to be called directly from a program without it being instantiated, much like a constant added to a program. Normally, static (as in Java, or class methods in Objective C) methods can only work with data local to the method, as they're not run from within an object.
In pike, constant functions aren't represented by a callable struct. That means that there's no way to know what the name of the function is. See function_name() for an example of this.
For a silly example that illustrates the general point, see the following article:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2001-11/03-qa-1121-mrhappy.html
Bill
On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Martin [iso-8859-1] Bähr wrote:
On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 12:44:16PM -0400, Bill Welliver wrote:
Consider this a vote for real java-style "static" methods in Pike :)
can you explain how static methods would solve that problem?