An alternative FFI/Parser proposal

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Sun Aug 20 23:55:43 UTC 2006


stéphane ducasse wrote:
>> No. They they contain *names* of variables, not variables themselves.
> 
> So this means that during the compilation of the method you map the name 
> to iv?

No. You can't map them during compilation since instance variables are 
(as the name says) per-instance, not per class (besides the terminology 
is "fields" precisely to distinguish them from raw slots, i.e., instance 
variables). All that happens during compilation is a semantic 
verification that this name is indeed the name of a field. Everything 
else happens at runtime.

>>> and I hate that the underlying representation of instance variable 
>>> contain XML while this is totally unnecessary as I mentioned 
>>> loooonnng time ago on the tweak mailing-list --- the smalltalk syntax 
>>> is enough to declare property we do not need XML for that).
>>
>> The underlying representing does not contain XML.
> 
> Ok you change that then, or did not tell me the right answer to my 
> original email long time ago

It has always been that way. Internally, the representation is an object 
(a field definition). However, when you serialize the class (file out) 
the definition is stored as XML. It could be anything - I opted for XML 
because it was there, it worked, it was easy to use, and I have no 
religious prejudices against it.

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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