Hi Ian

I replied too fast (as usual), don't you think that having
Metaclass name returning a symbol would be possible or is there 
something in the system
that conceptually prevents that. I do not think so.

Stef

On Sunday, February 23, 2003, at 04:43 AM, Ian Piumarta wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Feb 2003, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
>
>> Anyone know a good reason why Class>>name returns a symbol
>
> The name of a class is the Symbol on which it is keyed in the
> SystemDictionary.
>
>> , but MetaClass>>name returns a string?
>
> A Metaclass doesn't have a name.  It is known only by the expression 
> which
> generates a reference to it, viz 'MyClass class', and that's what's
> returned by any Metaclass when you ask for its name.  It makes no 
> sense to
> intern the string (to make a Symbol of it) since it isn't used as a key
> anywhere.
>
>> It causes me a little mess in SpaghettiTracer...
>
> Couldn't you convert all names to Strings (and then avoid any identity
> assumptions as appropriate)?
>
> Ian
>
>
>
Prof. Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE (ducasse at iam.unibe.ch) 
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/
  "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do
  different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today
  might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes