receiver

The receiver variable of this method. In most cases, this variable is called this, but in some languages, it is self (e.g. in Rust or Python) or can be freely named (e.g. in Golang). It can be empty, i.e., for pure function declarations as part of an interface.

Hints for language frontend developers: When a method is translated, the receiver must be created (usually in the form of a VariableDeclaration and added to the scope of the MethodDeclaration by a language frontend. Furthermore, it must be manually set to the receiver property of the method, since the scope manager cannot do this. If the name of the receiver, e.g., this, is used anywhere in the method body, a Reference must be created by the language frontend, and its Reference.refersTo property must point to this receiver. The latter is done automatically by the SymbolResolver, which treats it like any other regular variable.

Some languages (for example Python) denote the first argument in a method declaration as the receiver (e.g., in def foo(self, arg1), self is the receiver). In this case, extra care needs to be taken that for the first argument of the method, a VariableDeclaration is created and stored in receiver. All other arguments must then be processed normally (usually into a ParameterDeclaration). This is also important because from the "outside" the method only has the remaining arguments, when called (e.g., object.foo("myarg1")).

There is one special case that concerns the Java language: In Java, there also exists a super keyword, which can be used to explicitly access methods or fields of the (single) superclass of the current class. In this case, a Reference will also be created (with the name super) and it will also refer to this receiver, even though the receiver's name is this. This is one of the very few exceptions where the reference and its declaration do not share the same name. The SymbolResolver will recognize this and treat the scoping aspect of the super-call accordingly.