[Newbies] How to empty a collection?

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Murphy-Dye <brian at murphydye.com> writes:

Brian> My understanding as well is that this is the purpose of #become:, but
Brian> also that it is not very efficient in some versions of Smalltalk. If
Brian> you are using an OrderedCollection, this is probably a reasonably
Brian> efficient method as it doesn't need to search through the whole list
Brian> every time it removes an element:

Brian> removeAll
Brian>     [self notEmpty] whileTrue: [self removeLast]

What makes you think #removeLast doesn't need to search through the whole list
in some kinds of OrderedCollection?  You *do* have an implementation
assumption there.

I'd just do:

    removeAll
        self notEmpty ifTrue: [self become: self species new].

and let subclasses make it more efficient using implementation knowledge.

-- 
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