Chris Muller <afunkyobject at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Squeak answers false to:
> 
>   $a shallowCopy == $a
> 
> and is causing me some porting pain right now. 
> shallowCopy was overridden for the other atomics;
> SmallIntegers, Booleans, the UndefinedObject and
> Symbols, but not Characters.
> 
> Also, other Smalltalks override it for Behavior as
> well, which probably makes sense for the 99.9% case,
> and would also make my life happier right now.


Hmm, the comment of Object>>copy says:

	"Answer another instance just like the receiver. Subclasses typically 
	override this method; they typically do not override shallowCopy."


It sounds like #copy is Do What I Mean, and #shallowCopy is Do What I
Say.

The case of Characters is pretty extreme, though: there really should be
only one $a.  It would seem reasonable to override #shallowCopy for
Character.  For classes, on the other hand, #shallowCopy makes more
sense: Smalltalk perfectly well allows you to build up your own class
objects, including copying them.


-Lex