[Newbies] troubleshooting question

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Wed Jul 19 10:17:42 UTC 2006


On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 11:19:56AM -0700, Thomas J Keller wrote:
> Greetings,
> I copied this simple example from the Beginners page:
> OSProcess thisOSProcess stdOut nextPutAll: 'Hello World'
> 
> Before running it, I did install the OSProcess OSProcess Pluggin  
> packages.
> 
> But I get an MessageNotUnderstood error browser. But I can't seem to  
> figure out why stdOut is not understanding nextPutAll:

Hi Tom,

OSProcess does not work on all platforms. If you are using Linux (or
Mac OS/X with the less common Unix VM), the example should work. But
if you are using Windows, it would not work unless you build your own
custom VM and plugins (not what you had in mind, I'm sure).

Almost everything in Squeak works identically on all platforms, but
OSProcess is an exception to this rule. It is intended to provide
platform-specific extensions, and it works differently (or not at
all) on different platforms.

As for troubleshooting, try playing around with the Squeak debugger.
When you saw the "MessageNotUnderstood browser", you were seeing
the debugger. Open in up and explore a little, and you'll be able
learn a lot about problems like this one. You can also open a debugger
right away and use it to step slowly through a problem to see where
it goes wrong. For you example, try evaluating this in your workspace:

  self halt.
  OSProcess thisOSProcess stdOut nextPutAll: 'hello world'

Hope this helps a little,
Dave




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