How do I call an objective-c method?

Is there ever a legitimate reason to call the base class version of a different method?

• Calling 'super' or 'base' from an overridden version of the same method makes a great deal of sense to me. I have encountered cases where someone has called the base version of a different method, though, and it has seemed illegitimate every time I have encountered it. For example, someone will call something like this: void draw() {     if (condition())         super.collectObjects(objects);     ... } ...and the overridden collectObjects will be something like this: @Override void collectObjects(List<Object> objects) {     if (!condition())         super.collectObjects(); } This was done so that only the initial draw would collect the objects regardless of the condition (skipping the condition by calling the superclass version), and anything recursed would have to check the condition. Calling super.collectObjects from collectObjects, fine, but calling super.collectObjects from draw, to my mind, not fine. There seem much more legitimate means of accomplishing that, though. Has anyone encountered a legitimate use of calling the base class version of a different method? In the absence of that, I would suggest this be considered at least a warning.

• Answer:

  I have done this before under the following circumstance. In a case where I needed to completely change the behavior of a method from what its parent was doing and I still needed access to the behavior of my grandparent class. In this case I wrote a method in the parent class that called the grandparent method. And from the grandchild I called the other parent method. class grandparent { ImportantMethod() { ... } } class parent { @override ImporantMethod() { super.ImportantMethod(); ...//Put in parent functionality } CallParentImportantMethod() { super.ImportantMethod() } } class child { @override ImportantMethod() { ...//Implement functionality that is not compatible with parent but still needs behavior from other classes in the chain higher than parent super.CallParentImportantMethod(); } } And yes I know that this is not the best thing to do but given the constraints of what I was doing it was not possible to refactor to avoid this. As a best practice I would definitely say avoid calling other parent methods.