Talk:Interpreter pattern: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:10, 23 October 2013

Revision as of 15:14, 23 October 2013

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== Not confined to language processing ==

The point of design patterns is to recognize general patterns so that they can be applied anywhere. Unfortunately, the description of this pattern seems to be unnecessarily tied to a specific example both in the GOF book and in this article. A good counter-example would be to use a class hierarchy (or tree of interface implementations) of[[Function object|functional objects]] to determine the taxonomic classification of a specimen such as an animal, each level of the tree delegating the identification to the proper child branch until the specimen is identified. There is no grammar to interpret, yet this is the same pattern of code.

A more general and useful definition might be a "Rules Engine" as [http://www.oodesign.com/interpreter-pattern.html OODesign.com] suggests. Really, it's a tree data structure of functional objects (each implementing the same single method). The functional objects "rules" delegate to one another until a terminal object (rule) is reached. The objects could be related through an interface and through the logic in their single implemented method instead of through an object-oriented inheritance hierarchy.

If no-one finds somewhere that this has already been stated clearly, I can add it to my blog and someone who doesn't know me can come along some day and use that as a source to improve this article. <small><span class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by

--[[User:GlenPeterson|GlenPeterson]] ([[User talk:GlenPeterson|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/GlenPeterson|contribs]]) 15:0914, 23 October 2013 (UTC)</span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->