"Andy" == Andy Burnett andy.burnett@knowinnovation.com writes:
Andy> I was wondering exactly that myself. After my 'doh!' moment, when Randal Andy> explained what I was doing wrong, I was trying to work out why I had made Andy> the mistake. The conclusion I came to was that I was becoming so used to Andy> sending messages to objects, that I had confused myself into thinking that I Andy> was somehow sending 'become nil' to the object stored in :each.
In a system where #become: is a two-way swap, rather than one-way, you *never* want to send "become: nil". That'd break everything, since now the value of "nil" would be your other object. :) The "safe" way to "become:" something innocent is often "become: String new". Even so, it's (a) very slow on Squeak and (b) a bit shocking to the holder of the value, who still expects the old object at its referenced oop.