[Newbies] The Dictionary in a Workspace

Mike O'Brien obrien at rush.aero.org
Thu Jul 13 23:59:46 UTC 2006


	I remember in early version of ST80, a Workspace was a
_tabula rasa_ for each doIt.  Evaluating code left no trace.
Then someone stuck in a hack whereby each Workspace maintained
a Dictionary of variables that had been declared between
vertical lines in a code swatch executed via doIt, so that
you could then use those variables in later doIts and they
would already be defined, with the objects assigned to
them still hanging around via the Dictionary.

	I see that in Squeak, workspaces have Dictionaries,
and sure enough, a variable I declared in a doIt does show
up there, but it never seems to have a persistent value.
What's with that?  What's that Dictionary doing, if not
hanging onto the values of my temporary variables?

Mike O'Brien


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