Course of Raku / Objects, I/O, and exceptions / Classes and objects

Methods

Attributes give an object its data; methods give it behaviour. A method is a subroutine that belongs to a class and is called on an object. You declare one with the method keyword:

class Dog {
    has $.name;

    method bark {
        return $.name ~ ' says Woof!';
    }
}

Call a method on an object using the dot, just like an accessor:

my $rex = Dog.new(name => 'Rex');
say $rex.bark; # Rex says Woof!

Inside a method, the object on which the method was called is available as self. The attributes are reached through their accessors, written $.name, $.age, and so on. These also work inside interpolated strings:

class Dog {
    has $.name;

    method greet {
        "Hello, my name is $.name";
    }
}

say Dog.new(name => 'Rex').greet; # Hello, my name is Rex

The following topics cover private attributes (now that we have methods to use them), methods that take parameters, and methods that call other methods.

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