Fluent interfaces and leaky abstractions

Question

What is a fluent interface? I can\'t find a good definition of this, but all I get are long code examples in a language I am not very familiar with (e.g. C++).

Also, wha

Answer 1

An object-oriented interface is fluent if methods that are executed for side effect return self, so that such methods can be chained together.

I first encountered fluent interfaces in 1990 when the Modula-3 Interface Police (I am not making this up) required all initialization methods to return the object initialized. I believe this usage predates the coinage of the term "fluent interface".