Does the Single Responsibility Principle work in OOP?

Question

I am struggling to understand how the Single Responsibility Principle can me made to work with OOP.

If we are to follow the principle to a tee, then are we not left

Answer 1

This is one of the common misunderstanding of Single Responsibility Principle that a class should have only one function. A class is responsible for only one thing doesn't mean a class should have only one function. Single Responsibility Principle means logically separate your functionality into different classes instead of mixing up things.

One very simple example is, say if you are creating a Calculator you can add all functionalities purely for the calculator in the same class (add, subtract, multiply, divide etc.). You don't need to create a separate class for each of the functionality of calculator. But if you want to print calculated result to a printer then don't write the logic of printing to printer inside calculator class because printing to the printer is not the responsibility of calculator class. Create a separate class for the printer and write printing related logic in that class. If you are writing printing functionalities inside Calculator class then you are violating Single Responsibility Principle.