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Re: [Help-smalltalk] Symbols in array literals


From: Mike Anderson
Subject: Re: [Help-smalltalk] Symbols in array literals
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:31:57 +0000
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (X11/20061025)

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Mike Anderson wrote:
>> I would really like to be able to dispense with the # in front of
>> symbols in array literals. In other words, I would like the following to
>> be valid:
>>
>> #(1 two nil)
> 
> I'm not very happy about this.  There's no reason, then, why #(nil)
> should answer nil rather than #nil.  I can make it give a warning if you
> need compatibility, but I'd rather avoid fully backing the #(one two
> three) syntax.

The reason is that true, false and nil are special variables; they are
the only variables that you can include in an array literal. For that
reason, they hide the symbols #true, #false and #nil. To formulate it
another way, variables always hide symbols of the same name, but as it
happens, there are only three that are allowed.

Still, I'm not too bothered; it's part of the virtue of Smalltalk that I
can load STInST and have it work the way I'd prefer (although in
practice I might patch the VM).

Mike




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