[Vm-dev] Re: SmallInetger as methods was not ready yet....now maybe?

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Fri Dec 3 18:15:16 UTC 2010


On 12/3/2010 10:07 AM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
> On 3 December 2010 19:02, Andreas Raab<andreas.raab at gmx.de>  wrote:
>>> maybe supporting SmallInteger as methods was not a good idea :(
>> FWIW, Objects as methods weren't intended for SmallInts; they were intended
>> for stuff like method wrappers. Using SmallIntegers for methods is a hack
>> and I'm not surprised it doesn't work. But it is easy to fix - just wrap
>> your ints into something else and you're good to go.
>
> clearly, VM should not crash if it finds smallint in method dictionary.
> Of course, it may 'not work', but in less destructive way.

Well, there are limits. By the same argument you can come up with any 
number of things that currently crash the VM where one might say the VM 
should react in a less destructive way (thisContext swapSender: 0 
anyone?). Performance is important in this area and having to throw in a 
bunch of checks all over the place is something that I'm not to fond of.

If you really want to do something here I'd do it entirely differently: 
Add a primitive to the VM that can answer the question "can you execute 
this object?" and use it before adding something to the method 
dictionary. That way you won't be able to create a method dictionary 
that contains stuff which is not executable.

Cheers,
   - Andreas


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