From: "Alan Lovejoy" squeak-dev.sourcery@forum-mail.net Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'"squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: RE: Any reason for assigning block parameter in inject:into: Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:47:04 -0700
I concur. The restriction on assignment to arguments simply creates an unnecessary semantic distinction between arguments and other variables, and so adds complexity to the denotational semantics of Smalltalk syntax. It's not as bad as Java's distinction between objects and primitive values, but it's a language design flaw of the same sort.
But I thought lots of people here *wanted* optional read-only values, no? If those are added as I have seen requested several times then how will we distinguish *those*?
With the view given by most here, it does seem quite arbitrary. But with the view that "the system wants that for efficiency" (even though it seems that isn't the case in at least Squeak), it is actually the expected behavior.
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