That crazy dot idea

Stefan Matthias Aust sma at mail.netsurf.de
Sat Mar 20 19:22:18 UTC 1999


Hi!

Attached are some change sets which add a DotCompiler compiler class that
allows you to use "object.name" for accessing a name aspect of that object
and (even better IMHO) "object.name := value" for setting that aspect. Just
try it out, if you like.

To do it, first load ParserPatch, a small correction to the system, I'd
like to see included in the next version, as this reduces the number of
direct references to class Parser.  The you can load the DotTest file.  The
first file, CompilerPatch is another piece of code, I'd like to see
included in the base Squeak as it again eases the replacement of compilers
and also removes a direct Compiler reference in the DictionaryInspector class.

BTW, I just Travis Griggs' article "Please do not ruin the elegance..." and
basically I agree with him. I also sort-of dislike the way, name space
binding object literals where hacked into the VisualWorks grammar. However,
I cannot agree with the argument that using a dot for patch names is more
un-natural than using for example the "/".  While most choices come from
the American way of writing natural text, both "/" or "." are artifacts of
other computer-related conventions.  The argument, that "/" is used for
URLs isn't stronger IMHO than the one, that nearly every other computer
language uses "." for object paths. That's my point of view :-)


bye
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="DotTest.20Mar808pm.cs"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="DotTest.20Mar808pm.cs"

Attachment converted: Anon:DotTest.20Mar808pm.cs (????/----) (000079AE)
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="CompilerPatch.20Mar807pm.cs"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="CompilerPatch.20Mar807pm.cs"

Attachment converted: Anon:CompilerPatch.20Mar807pm.cs (????/----) (000079AF)
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="ParserPatch.20Mar808pm.cs"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="ParserPatch.20Mar808pm.cs"

Attachment converted: Anon:ParserPatch.20Mar808pm.cs (????/----) (000079B0)

--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  ...and now something completely different





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