Postcondtions and return values

From: Ken (kk_oop_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/27/04 

Date: 27 Feb 2004 14:18:58 -0800

Hi.

When using Design by Contract, if a method returns a value that is not
the owning object's state, is the value returned still a
postcondition? For example, maybe some Calculator object has a sine
method that takes a parameter of x. Would the a postcondition be that
sine of x is returned, even though that has nothing to do with the
state of the calculator? I think the information is useful to the
client, so I would think it would be a postcondition, but I just
wanted to get the opinions of others.

Thanks,

Ken