In object-oriented programming, an object contains both the data and the methods for accessing that data. Any one writing to, reading from, or otherwise accessing that object, should do this through the object methods. This way the user of the object is shielded from the internal implementation of the object and from changes that my occur to it.

What the phrase implies is that that Apache's error_log is part of an Apache object also called error_log, which must contain methods for writing to and modifying the log. A properly written program should not attempt to access the error_log file directly, but instead should pass the data (an error message in this case) to Apache's own error_log object, which will do the work for it.

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Note added at 13 hrs 26 mins (2004-02-05 23:43:25 GMT)
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The reference to template::config means that this method will be used to invoke (trying to put in non-tech terms) the Apache object error_log. Here is a snippet from the method\'s in the CPAN documentation:

http://search.cpan.org/~abw/Template-Toolkit-2.13/lib/Templa...

SYNOPSIS
use Template::Config;
DESCRIPTION
This module implements various methods for loading and instantiating other modules that comprise the Template Toolkit. It provides a consistent way to create toolkit components and allows custom modules to be used in place of the regular ones.



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Note added at 13 hrs 33 mins (2004-02-05 23:50:46 GMT)
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In summary, the steps are:

- You are running the Apache web server
- Some server error occurs, the server code that handles the error is written in Perl with CPAN packages
- The program calls template::config to create the context for Apache\'s error_log object (probably initial values, environment values, customized call interface, etc.)
- Using template::config, the program then loads the error_log object and passes to it the error data.
- The error_log object uses its internal methods (OO term for functions/subroutines) to write the error to the error_log file.

As I said above, this is really a programming language not a natural language question.

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Note added at 19 hrs 13 mins (2004-02-06 05:30:41 GMT)
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Sorry for the typos:
trying to put *it* in non-tech terms
the method\'s *description* int CPAN documentation