(#(nil) at: 1) ~~ nil
Dave Newman
tinman at ntsource.com
Mon Feb 8 16:29:30 UTC 1999
Dan Ingalls writes:
>
> >In furthering my understanding of Squeak I came across the fact
> >that
> >
> >( #( nil ) at: 1 ) ~~ nil.
> >
> >evaluates to true.
>
> In short, yes. It is the way Squeak is supposed to work, and the way all=
> Smalltalk-80s worked originally, following the simple rule that identifiers=
> in a literal array get turned into symbols -- period.
>
> You may want to stop here (8-)...
>
> Some people expect, and some Smalltalks provide, special treatment for nil,=
> or for nil, false and true. There was a loooooo......ooooooong discussion=
> about this on the SqueakList beginning 8/23 of last year under the heading,=
> "nil or #nil?". Everyone has good reasons for their differing positions on=
> this topic.
Dan,
Thanks for the short (and long) explanations. I'm okay with keeping the
status quo. I encountered this while porting T-Gen. It uses some large,
literal arrays with lots of nils sprinkled about. I've already found a
work-around for this though. Nothing a little recursive search and
replace couldn't fix after the literal array is filedIn. <grin>
--Dave
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