Hi Lex,

Thanks for clarifying this - actually my concern wasn't about changing it
but rather that the current implementation might be buggy.

BTW, do you have a few test cases for the things you've done? They would be
helpful both, for illustrating the changes as well as making sure that
someone installing Islands isn't going to be screwed by accidentally using a
VM that doesn't have those changes.

Cheers,
  - Andreas


> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Lex Spoon
> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 6:20 AM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: [ENH] VM tweaks for Islands project
> 
> 
> "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> > The only potential issue I could see is that 
> primitiveStringReplace has a *slightly* different boundary 
> check than the one being in 3.6a VMMaker. It is not clear to 
> me whether the difference is intentional or not and (lacking 
> any history information in the SAR file, sigh...) I can't see 
> whether this was changed by VMMaker or by the Islands 
> changed. In any case, it needs to be sorted out.
> > 
> 
> Under threat of the comfy chair, I must admit it was intentional.  The
> idea, as I recall through the dim fogginess of time, was that 
> you could
> now do a 0-length replacement--a noop--without the primitive 
> failing.  A
> 0-length replacement is specified by having the "stop" index 
> be one less
> than the "start" index.
> 
> I'm struggling amazingly hard not to say any more about this tiny
> subject.  I've now written and deleted 3-4 paragraphs!  Let 
> me just say
> that if this change continues to be annoying, I'd be fine 
> with the check
> going back the way it was.
> 
> As for the previous changes, note that Islands happened in Squeak
> 2.8 and 2.9, and that my previous tweak to this method happened
> two years prior to Islands -- whatever version of Squeak that would
> be.  Surely that would explain Tim's Twilight Zone observation
> of the method that was changed but yet never patched.  It was
> patched in the 2.x update stream! 
> 
> Lex
>