3.1.4 Method calls and dereferencing

Unlike in other languages, there is a syntactic difference between dereferencing an object and calling a method on an object. The dot (.) operator dereferences a class and returns the contents:

     x = class.property;

The pipe (|), on the other hand, dereferences the method and then calls it with the arguments and object given:

     x|doWork();

Any arguments passed to the method are within the parenthesis (which are optional if no arguments are being passed). For methods not defined in a class, the parenthesis are required for Kite to determine whether you want the method object or to call the method.