Whilst discussing delegation and proxying with Stephen P, the subject of
#class came up. Since #class is implemented in practice via a very
special case bytecode it is a royal pain for proxy work since you can't
override it very easily.

Now, #class is not a message one should send very often so one must
wonder if it is actually sensible to have the vm do this. I looked up
all the users of the relevant bytecode and there are in fact 1143 of
them in a upgrade#4478 image. Random sampling suggests that a large
percentage of those are case where the writer of the method ought to be
soundly spanked for not factoring things properly. None of the random
sample struck me as being cases where the performance enhancement of a
short-circuit bytecode was interesting.

We could, I suspect, convert the bytecode to at least do a normal
message send (like nearly all the other bytecode special sends) and ease
life for proxinators without any impact on performance. Can anyone come
up with a really good reason for the current situation? Just curious...

tim
-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- Four bits short of a full DEC.