Creator and Factory

Question

Hello!
I am not sure if i have understood the Grasp creator pattern right.
I made a C++ program in school before. Some of the classes were supposed to have a
method called create that created an object of its own class and returned it.
Is it that method that defines the creator pattern or something else?
Can someone show me a short code example that explains the creator pattern?
There seem to be different kinds of the Gof pattern Factory.
Whats the difference between them?

Answer 1

mattias_westerberg wrote:
Hello!
I am not sure if i have understood the Grasp creator pattern right.Presumably you mean this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRASP_(Object_Oriented_Design)#Creator
Be wary of tracking down absolutely everything that says "pattern" and assuming that it is in fact a pattern.
As stated in the above link I doubt there is enough complexity for that to qualify as a pattern. One might as well claim that a loop is a pattern.
I made a C++ program in school before. Some of the classes were supposed to have a
method called create that created an object of its own class and returned it.
Is it that method that defines the creator pattern?Not per the above definition.
Can someone show me a short code example that explains the creator pattern?
Pseudo code.
       class MyDigit
            int digit;
            MyDigit(int digit) { this.digit = digit; }
      class DigitCollection
            AList<Digit> digits = ....
            MyDigit CreateSingleDigit(int digit)
                 return new MyDigit(digit);
There seem to be different kinds of the Gof pattern Factory.
Whats the difference between them?As the definition says there is a composite/aggregation relationship for the 'Creator'
For a Factory Pattern there isn't.