Generating output

The following functions and methods are used to generate output, including descriptions of SOM objects. They all produce their output using the character-output procedure held by the global variable SOMOutCharRoutine. The default procedure for character output simply writes the character to stdout, but it can be replaced to change the output destination of the methods and functions below. (See Chapter 5 for more information on customizing SOM.)

somDumpSelf

(method) writes a detailed description of an object, including its class, its location, and its instance data. The receiver of the method is the object to be dumped. An additional argument is the "nesting level" for the description. [All lines in the description will be indented by (2 * level) spaces.]
somPrintSelf
(method) Writes a brief description of an object, including its class and location in memory. The receiver of the method is the object to be printed.
somPrintf
(function) SOM's version of the C "printf" function. It generates character stream output via SOMOutCharRoutine. It has the same interface as the C "printf" function.
somVprintf
(function) Represents the "vprint" form of somPrintf. Its arguments are a formatting string and a va_list holding the remaining arguments.
somPrefixLevel
(function) Generates (via somPrintf) spaces to prefix a line at the indicated level. The return type is void. The argument is an integer specifying the level. The number of spaces generated is (2 * level).
somLPrintf
(function) Combines somPrefixLevel and somPrintf. The first argument is the level of the description (as for somPrefixLevel) and the remaining arguments are as for somPrintf (or for the C "printf" function).

See the System Object Model Programming Reference for more information on a specific function or method.

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