Filing in

Andrew P. Black black at cse.ogi.edu
Fri Sep 22 23:28:27 UTC 2000


Often, when I try to file in some code that looks interesting and has 
been posted to this list, the filein starts OK but then I get the 
error

	MessageNotUnderstood methodsFor:stamp:

issued from the compiler.

Now, as a moderately accomplished Smalltalker, I poke around in the 
debugger and I find on the stack something like

DoIt
	^ TheWorldMenu methodsFor: 'as yet unclassified' stamp: 'mdr 
9/4/2000 11:05'

and I figure out that because of the way that a fileIn actually 
executes the code in the file the problem is that a class called 
TheWorldMenu is being extended by the filein, but my image does not 
define that class at all, hence the problem.

However, if I were even more of a novice than I am, I think that I 
would be really confused an surprised by this MessageNotUnderstood, 
when what I might expect is a warning like "undefined class 
TheWorldMenu".  Better, I might expect the filein to complete, and 
then get a warning that I also need to filein the class "The 
WorldMenu".

Thinking about this even more, what both the novice and myself really 
need is some sort of dependence mechanism that would tell me where 
the H*ll to go looking for "TheWorldmemu".

Thoughts, anyone?

	Andrew







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