At 10:54 AM -0800 1/1/01, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>  >>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew C Greenberg <werdna at mucow.com> writes:
>
>Andrew> It's possible that I'm just not getting it, but it would appear that
>Andrew> the pseudo-code for #whileTrue; and #whileFalse: is incorrect.  Even
>Andrew> if I were right, it is still the height of pedantry on my part to call
>Andrew> this a bug, since the code is never executed due to compiler inlining.
>Andrew> Nevertheless, perhaps it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have
>Andrew> pseudo-code here that would work if the compiler did not inline loops?
>
>Andrew> The present code in BlockContext is:
>
>>>  whileTrue: aBlock
>>>  "Ordinarily compiled in-line, and therefore not overridable.
>>>  This is in case the message is sent to other than a literal block.
>>>  Evaluate the argument, aBlock, as long as the value of the
>>>  receiver is true."
>>>
>  >> ^ [self value] whileTrue: [aBlock value]
>
>Your change makes sense if the compiler did not recognize this as a
>special case, although it would suffer from recursion trouble if there
>was no tail-recursion optimization (which there isn't, if I recall
>from the last time I asked about this same thing).

It would appear that the assumption of inlining would benefit both 
sets of code, and would suffer the same tail-recursion problem in 
both cases if it did not.  The difference I see is that I understand 
why the more traditional:

	^self value ifTrue: [aBlock value. self whileTrue: aBlock]

would work, but I don't understand how the existing code could EVER 
work.  It is apparent that I am missing something.  Please clarify.