[squeak-dev] Immutability (was Re: About String vs Symbols)

Janko Mivšek janko.mivsek at eranova.si
Tue Jul 29 22:24:59 UTC 2008


Eliot Miranda wrote:

>      > Wouldn't that break a lot of code? Like anything that does
>     WriteStream
>      > on a String like #streamContents: ?
>      >
>     No, unless you're doing WriteStream on: '' which you should not do
>     anyway.
>     Normal Strings (those that are created with #new: or with copying) are
>     mutable, just as they are now.
>     In general, any code that breaks when the immutability of literals is
>     ensured by the VM was broken to begin with...
> 
> 
> +1.
> 
> Its trivial to fix such code.  e.g. if you have
>       (ReadWriteStream with: 'The date is ') print: Date today; contents
> you simply change it to
>       (ReadWriteStream with: 'The date is ' copy) print: Date today; 
> contents
> and you're done.
> 
> Some developers in the VW community complained when we introduced 
> immutability in 2002 about exactly these cases.  But the fuss soon died 
> down as people realised that indeed their code was safer with the change.

I can confirm that. Changes to the existing code due to the immutability 
were indeed rare. In my case mostly changing WriteStrean on: '' to 
WriteStream on: String new.

Best regards
JAnko


-- 
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si



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