Question

I’m new to Dart, so maybe I’m missing something here:

This works:

In my main(), I have this:

var a = _someFunction;
var b = _someFunction;
print("${a == b}"); // true. correct!

Where _someFunction is another top-level function.

This does NOT work: (at least not how I’m expecting it to)

Given this class…

class Dummy {

    void start() {
        var a = _onEvent;
        var b = _onEvent;
        print(a == b); // false. ???????
    }

    void _onEvent() {
    }
}

Instantiating it from main() and calling its start() method results in false. Apparently a new instance of some function or closure object is created and returned whenever my code obtains a reference to _onEvent.

Is this intentional behaviour?

I would expect that obtaining multiple references to the same method of the same instance returns the same object each time. Perhaps this is intended for some reason. If so; what reason? Or is this a bug/oversight/limitation of VM perhaps?

Thanks for any insights!

Answer 1

Currently, the behaviour seems to be intentional, but the following defect is open since May 2012: https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=144